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PROTISTANTISM 



AND 



INFIDELITY. 



AN APPEAL TO 
CANDID AMERICANS. 



By F. X. WENINGER, D. D., 

MISSIONARY OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS. 




THIRD EDITION. 



NEW YORK: 
SADLIER & CO., 164 WILLIAM STREET. 

CINCINNATI : 
JOHN P. WALSH, 170 SYCAMORE STREET. 

AND FOE SALE BY ALL OTHER BOOKSELLERS IN THE U. S. 



1862. 



^% 



%^'' 






:J\ 



Z' 



Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by 

F. X. WENINGER, 

in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States, 
for the Southern District of Ohio. 



2. Z, ^ ^ "2 



TO THE 



AMERICAN PEOPLE 



THESE PAGES 



ARE RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 



BY THEIR SINCERE FRIEND, 



THE AUTHOR, 



PREFACE. 



-♦<«»?< 



I HAVE now been in this country for up- 
wards of thirteen years, during which time I 
have labored as a Catholic missionary through- 
out the United States. I have traveled from 
place to place giving Missions, with scarcely 
any interruption, and have repeatedly traversed 
the country in every direction from Virginia to 
the Mexican boundaries of Texas, from New 
York to Minnesota. I know America, and 
know it far better than my own native country. 

In the course of my Missions, it has often 
happened that Americans expressed a desire to 
hear me in their own language. Whenever I 
addressed them, I was struck with the profound 
attention with which they honored my extem- 

V 



VI PREFACE. 

porary efforts. I noticed on such occasions, 
and, indeed, in all my intercourse with the 
native inhabitants, so many excellent qualities 
of mind and heart, that I could not but view, 
with the sincerest feelings of compassion, so 
noble and intelligent a people seduced by 
religious error, when it would be so easy for 
them, by a little candid inquiry, to overcome 
the prejudices of education and habit, and 
discover that the Catholic Church is the only 
means of salvation for men. 

Americans, I do not mean to flatter you ; but 
I may safely assert that there is no nation upon 
which the Catholic Church looks with more 
tender solicitude than upon yours ; none more 
worthy the labors of priests and people for 
their conversion. 

My vocation as a Missionary among the Ger- 
man and the French population has seldom 
allowed me to address you from the pulpit. 
Urged on by a deep feeling of duty to aid in 
disabusing you of the prejudices of your Pro- 
testant education, I have thought of fulfilling 
this important duty of Christian and brotherly 



PREFACE. Vll 

affection through the press. I hope, with the 
blessing of God, that my argument, if examined 
dispassionately and meditated on with candor, 
will prove amply sufficient to induce every 
candid man among you to acknowledge the 
truth of the Catholic Church. 

All that is needed to test a man's sincerity, 
is to place before him those first principles 
which, like the sun in heaven, are evident by 
their own light. For him who closes his eyes 
against such evidence, whole libraries of con- 
troversial works would prove insufficient : he 
deliberately adheres to error, because he is 
unwilling to make the sacrifices which conver- 
sion to the Catholic faith would impose upon 
him. The mists that rise from sin exclude the 
sunbeams of the truth. I fear, indeed, that not 
a few are guilty of deliberately rejecting the 
well-known truth, particularly among those who 
find it for their worldly interests and conveni- 
ence to remain Protestants. 

It is not for such men these pages are 
written, but for that larger class who are Pro- 
testants only because they were born and 



VIU PREFACE. 

brought up in Protestantism ; who are sincere, 
willing to examine, and determined to follow 
their convictions. To this class it is my 
earnest wish that all my readers may belong. 

Throughout the whole of this appeal, I mean 
to be plain spoken ; this I owe to the import- 
ance of the subject, and to the honesty of your 
character; I am prompted to it by my own 
disposition, I am authorized in it by your 
example, and still more so by the plainness of 
the Gospel. The Gospel calls everything by 
its own name, and makes use of no more cir- 
cumlocution in characterizing a lie, than in 
testifying to the truth. Disguising none of my 
convictions, I will tell you the truth, and even 
unpleasant truths expressed in the plainest 
language. A physician is guilty of no wrong 
in calling his friend's sickness by its real name, 
and prescribing for him the best remedies 
whether palatable or not : should he act other- 
wise, he is not a true friend. I am your friend, 
God knows. Never have I harbored or experi- 
enced any bitterness of feeling towards Pro- 
testants or Infidels. My only sentiment 



PREFACE. IX 

towards you, is that of love and compassion ; 
my only wish, to extend to you a brother's 
hand, and to help to save you. Your salvation 
is my only object in offering you these pages ; 
and I have no doubt that, before laying down 
the book, you will be fully convinced of it. 

My arguments, I hope, will be solid ; but in 
order to give to the work the character of a 
friendly conversation, rather than of a dry 
polemical discussion, I shall occasionally intro- 
duce sdrne incidents of my missionary life. 
While such incidents will serve to illustrate my 
proofs, they will, perhaps, also enable you to 
read the work with less fatigue and more 
interest. 

Americans, read, reflect, and decide for 
yourselves. 

THE AUTHOR. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



>J«<c 



FAGB. 

Pekfacb V 

Inteoduction 1 

CHAPTER I. 

The Character OP PROTESTANTisir 8 

SECTION L 

The Distressing Nature op the Protestant Doctrine as 
Compared with the Catholic, on the following 
Points : 

The Primitive Condition of Man and the Fall 7 

The Redemption • • • • 13 

The Church 17 

The Means of Salvation 31 

Baptism 34 

Confirmation 36 

The Eucharist 37 

Penance — Indulgences 49 

xi 



XU CONTENTS. 

TAQH, 

Extreme Unction 58 

Holy Orders 62 

Matrimony 66 

GoodWorks 68 

Purgatory • • 72 

The Communion of Saints 76 

SECTION n. 

Protestantism a Eeliqion op Despair 85 

The Charge proved 86 

Ulterior Consequences 88 

CHAPTER IL 

The Principle of Protestantism 104 

SECTION I 

Strength op the Catholic Principle, which is, that the 
Teaching op the True CntiRCH op Christ is the true 
Kule op Faith 104 

Unanswerable Proof, founded on the mark op Apostolic- 

ITTj THAT THE CaTHOLIC ChURCH IS THE TRUE ChURCH 

OP Christ 106 

The Other Marks op the True Church op Christ belong 

ONLY TO THE CaTHOLIC ChURCH •••• 122 

Unity 124 

Holiness • 131 

Universality ..•»... 139 

Indestructibility 143 



CONTENTS. XIU 

PAGE. 

CoNCLusiVB Proof op the Infalubihty op the Catholic 
Church, as the True Church op Christ — Her Infal- 
libility IS the Rule op Faith 153 

SECTION n. 

The Weakness and Absurdity op the Protestant Rule 

op Faith 163 

The Private Interpretation op the Bible has none op 

the Requisites op a True Rule op Faith 166 

The Rule of Faith must be — 

Clear 166 

Complete 169 

As old as the Faith itself 171 

Universal 173 

Accessible to every one, and Final 174 

The Protestant Rule op Faith lacks all these Charac- 
teristics — The Catholic Rule op Faith possesses 
them all 177 

CHAPTER III. 
Protestant Prejudices 181 

SECTION I. 

Religious Prejudices 191 

The Pope 191 

The Clergy 194 

Confession 198 

Indulgences 203 

TheBible 204 

Saints 206^ 



XIV CONTENTS. 

PAQB. 

Mary 212 

Celibacy 216 

Holy Mass 220 

Communion 221 

Use of the Latin Language • 222 

Ceremonies 226 

Abstinence 229 

Exclusive Salvation 230 

SECTION II. 

Political Prejudices 234 

Allegiance 244 

The Inquisition 244 

Despotism 249 

Civilization 250 

Morality 254 

The Sabbath 256 

The Sovereignty of the Pope and his Civil Government- 257 

Eepublicanism • 261 

Freedom of Discussion 265 

CHAPTER IV. 

Infidelity the Ultimate Consequence of Pkotest- 

^ A.NTISM 278 

SECTION I. 

Infidelity Refuted. Seven Conclusive Aeouments 

AGAINST Infidelity 280 

The Undeniable Existence of God 280 

The Undeniable Immortality of the Soul 283 



CONTENTS. XV 

PAGB. 

The Undeniable Necessity of Eeligion 287 

The Undeniable Necessity of a Divinely Eevealed Reli- 
gion 288 

The Undeniably Divine Mission of Christ 291 

The Undeniable Superhuman Character of the Church 

of Christ 304 

The Undeniable Axiom "Where Peter is, there is the 

Church" 306 

SECTION II. 

Objections Answered 309 

The Incomprehensibility of Mysteries 309 

Everlasting Punishment, 315 

The Supposed Contradiction of Revelation with Geology 
and History, 327 

Conclusion, 333 



PROTESTANTISM 

A RELIGION OF 

DISTRESS AND DESPAIR. 



The assertion that Protestantism is a Reli- 
gion of distress and despair, may astonish you, 
but I shall make it evident from a characteristic 
of Protestantism, to which, I think, sufficient 
attention has not been hitherto called. 

That characteristic is the startling fact, that 
Protestantism, as taught by the early Reformers 
and as held in substance to the present day, 
has rejected precisely those articles of the 
Catholic Creed, which are best calculated to 
inspire consolation and hope, and has set up, 
instead, just such doctrines as must inevitably 
sadden and crush the soul, and ultimately lead 
to utter despair. 

That characteristic, if true, as I shall show 
it to be beyond all doubt, is, you will acknow- 
ledge, fatal to the claims of Protestantism 
2 1 



Z PROTESTANTISM A RELIGION OF 

considered as a Divine Religion. It is so evi- 
dently incompatible vi^ith the wants of the heart 
and the requirements of reason, that on the 
supposition of Catholicity and Protestantism 
being both of them mere human inventions, it 
would be easier to explain how Protestants 
could have become Catholics, than to assign a 
valid reason why Catholics should ever have 
become Protestants ; for who would not choose 
to believe doctrines tending to cheer and con- 
sole, rather than such as are only fit to crush 
the heart and lead a man to despair ? I con- 
sider it one of the most astonishing facts in all 
history, that j^our ancestors rejected Catholicity 
with all its consolations, and adopted, instead, a 
Religion of distress and despair. Such a choice 
could never have been the effect of calm reflec- 
tion, but must have been, as history proves it 
was, the result of violence and blind passion. 

To prove my assertion it is not necessary to 
demonstrate the divinity of the Catholic Church 
and her doctrines ; I shall do that, in a brief 
and conclusive manner, in a subsequent part 
of the work, when I come to the discussion of 
the principle of faith. Neither is it necessary 
that my Protestant readers should in all respects 
agree with the early Reformers. To establish 
the point at issue, it is enough to show that the 
early Reformers held the doctrines of distress 



DISTRESS AND DESPAIR. S 

and despair which I ascribe to them, and that 
the doctrines of Protestantism at the present 
day are still the same in substance in many 
respects, and in principle the same in every 
respect. 

I do not undertake to write a long and tedi- 
ous polemical discussion, nor a symbolic like 
Moehler's or Buchmann's ; I simply intend to 
make a comparison between the doctrines of 
Protestants and Catholics, and to examine 
them in their nature and logical consequences. 

I feel confident that at every step in the 
comparison you will find a convincing proof of 
my charges against Protestantism ; and the 
Catholic doctrine will appear to you not only 
consoling, but so much in harmony with all the 
wants of man, that it could only have proceeded 
from a Divine hand, bearing upon its face the 
evident seal of divine truth and beauty. I 
have as little doubt that you will discover, that 
Protestantism, by its rejection of Catholic doc- 
trine has disfigured the beauty of the Christian 
Creed, and robbed you of the sweetest and 
holiest consolations of life, along with your 
only hope of eternal salvation. 

Having reviewed the principal points con- 
troverted between Catholics and Protestants, I 
shall be justified in asking you with astonish- 
ment, How could your forefathers have ac- 



4 PROTESTANTISM A RELIGION OF, ETC. 

cepted so extraordinary a Religion ? and how 
can their descendants cling to a religious 
system so void of hope and consolation ? 

In the next place, I will show you, that the 
only obstacles to your return to the Catholic 
Church, are a lack of earnest examination into 
the principle of faith, and your adherence to 
unfounded anti-Catholic prejudices. 

Finally, I shall briefly, yet unanswerably, re- 
fute Infidelity, the last logical consequence of 
Protestantism. 

Accordingly the work is divided into four 
chapters, treating successively of the Character 
of Protestantism, of the Principle of Protestant- 
ism, of the Prejudices of Protestants, and of the 
last logical consequence of Protestantism, Infi- 
delity. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE CHARACTER OF PROTEST- 
ANTISM. 



By the character of Protestantism I under- 
stand that peculiar mark which stamps the 
whole Protestant system as a Religion of dis- 
tress and despair. To prove that such is its 
real character, I shall review its doctrines as 
compared with those of the Catholic Church. 
In doing so, to be as brief and plain as possible, 
I will follow a chronological order, and com- 
pare in succession the Catholic doctrine with 
the opposite Protestant view, on the condition 
of our First Parents, the Fall, the Redemption, 
the Church, and the Means of Salvation given 
us by our Redeemer. Whatever I advance on 

5 



6 THE CHARACTER 

these topics, in regard to Protestantism, I shall 
support by quotations from the writings and 
approved Formularies of Faith of the early 
Reformers, or by referring to public facts and 
professions with which every well-informed 
man is acquainted. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 



SECTION I. 



PROTESTANTISM A RELIGION OF 
DISTRESS. 



THE FIEST CONDITION, AND THE FALL OF MAN. 

In the condition of our first parents, the 
Catholic doctrine distinguishes, in particular, 
two things, nature and grace, or the nature of 
our first parents, and their supernatural state. 
This doctrine is illustrated by the Fathers of 
the Church from the text of Genesis, " God 
created man after His own image and likeness." 
By the image here spoken of, they understand 
the reason and free-will of man ; and by the 
likeness, his state of union with God by super- 
natural grace. The Catholic Church teaches, 
that by their supernatural state of union with 
God, our first parents became children of God 
and heirs of heaven. If they remained obedi- 
ent to God, they were to be exempt from death, 
and, at the close of their trial on earth, to be 



O THE CHARACTER 

admitted to the Beatific Vision, a state of higher 
supernatural union with God in heaven. They 
were destined to see God face to face, to be 
transfigured in Him, entering into His glory 
and His bliss, in beatific union with the blessed 
spirits for all eternity. There is not a heart on 
earth but must feel the beauty, the sublimity, 
the bliss of the condition of our first parents, 
as taught by the Catholic Church. 

In the next place, the Catholic Church 
teaches, that our first parents were free to re- 
main in their blessed condition, or to forfeit it, 
that is, free to sin or not to sin. 

Lastly, the Catholic Church teaches, that by 
the fall, man lost the likeness only of God, that 
is, his state of supernatural grace ; but that the 
image of God, that is, his natural reason and 
free-will were only impaired, not destroyed. 
Hence, according to the Catholic doctrine, man, 
after the fall, retained the ability to perform 
good actions, in the natural order, and remained 
free as he was before the fall. 

This doctrine surely is most consoling, for 
there is a comfort even in our losses, when we 
feel that something yet remains, and we can 
look forward to the time when, with what 
remains, our losses may still be repaired. 

Protestantism refuses you this comfort. In 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 9 

its original teaching and logical tendency, it 
denies the Catholic doctrine of the first condi- 
tion of man, as well as the Catholic doctrine of 
the fall. It denies the possibility of man's real 
restoration, and takes a most distressing view 
of his condition. Here are my proofs. In re- 
gard to the original condition of man, Luther, 
and Calvin, and their early adherents taught, 
that our first parents were not raised to a 
supernatural state, but, with all their high gifts, 
were left in a purely natural condition. With 
regard to the fall, they taught the doctrine of 
total depravity. According to their doctrine, 
the image of God was destroyed in man by the 
disobedience of our first parents ; man's free- 
will was b}' it lost forever, and man has re- 
tained only the power of sinning ; so that no 
good human action, even in the natural order, 
is possible in our present state, and what men 
deem their virtues, are merely so many sins and 
splendid abominations before God. Quenstedt, 
a Lutheran theologian of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, collected the opinions of Luther on this 
subject from the Reformer's own works. Lu- 
ther's doctrine, in his own words, is as follows : 
*' To sin was man's nature after his fall." 
" Man himself is nothing but sin." " What 
is born of a father and mother, is nothing but 
3 



10 



THE CHARACTER 



sin."* It is well known that Luther wrote a 
whole work, entitled ''De Servo Arbitrio'' — ''On 
Slave- WUlj^ in which he labors to prove, that by 
the fall, man lost his free-will, so as to have 
become incapable of choosing deliberately 
between good and evil ; and that whatever he 
does, he does by an irresistible impulse, either 
good or evil, according as God or Satan over- 
powers his will. The original and elegant 
comparison he makes use of to illustrate his 
point, is generally known : he compares the will 
of man, after the fall, to — an ass. " If God 
rides him," says Luther, " He drives him 
whithersoever He will, to do good : if the devil 
rides him, he drives him as he wishes." 
" Whatever happens, happens necessarily, 
though to us it may appear to be done freely." 
This assertion Luther repeats again and again 
in the work just quoted. In another work, he 
says, " Free-will does nothing, because there is 
no free-wilL"f 

What is still more shocking, is that Luther 
views this state of total depravity with delight. 
He says, " Even if man could have free-will, 
he would not like it, for it would only disquiet 

* Quenstedt, Theolog. Bidact. Polem. part. II. Witten- 
berg, 1669. Cf. Bellarm., De Statu Protop. j and Luther, 
com. 3. in Gen. 

t Luther. Adv. Erasm. Rotterdam. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 11 

him. But as it is, I can say and believe, I 
commit evil, but God does not punish me, 
because I believe. So I feel quiet."* 

Thus Protestantism, as taught by the first 
Reformer, plucks up by the root the highest 
blessing of our lives, our consciousness of 
freedom. 

Melanchthon, the faithful interpreter of the 
doctrines of Luther his master, calls the dogma 
of free-will " a slanderous doctrine, which has 
gradually insinuated itself into Christianity, 
and originated with the heathens." " Man," 
he says, " can of himself do nothing but com- 
mit sin, just as fire burns, and the magnet 
attracts iron. To assert the contrary, is to be 
a Pelagian."! 

Calvin repeats the same doctrine : " Every- 
thing in man, after his fall, is sin. The virtues 
of the heathens, such as those of Socrates, 
Xenocrates, and Zeno, were only splendid 
crimes."! 

If all this is true, the fall, though we had no 
personal share in it, must have changed us into 
incarnate demons. Such, at the very outset, is 
the conclusion to which Protestantism logically 



» De Servo Arbit. f. 236. 

t Melanchth. Loc. Theol., pp. 19, 122. 

X Calv. Inst. 1. ii. c. 1 et 3. 



12 THE CHARACTER 

leads ; one which alone would be sufficient to 
overwhelm us with distress. 

The worst of it is, that this doctrine is not 
peculiar to the chiefs of the Reformation, but 
has passed into the principles of Protestantism, 
as appears from the Formularies of Faith and 
the symbolical writings of the early Protestants. 
They do not all, in express terms, go so far as 
Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, or Zwingli, but 
they proceed far enough to imply the whole 
doctrine by logical sequence. The most im- 
portant among the early Protestant symbolical 
writings, is the Formula of Concord, or ^^Solida 
Declaration- of the year 1577. That Formula 
says expressly, " The likeness of God has dis- 
appeared in consequence of original sin, and 
an evil substance has penetrated into the spi- 
ritual being of man, whereby that being has 
become most abominable."* The Swiss, Bel- 
gian, and Scottish Confessions of Faith, contain, 
in substance, the very same doctrine. 

In opposition to this doctrine the Council of 
Trent enacted the following canon : " If any 
one shall say, that all the works which are done 
before justification, in whatever manner they 
may be done, are really sins, or deserve the 

* Solid. Declar. c. 9 and 10. De Peccat. Orig. § 2 and 22. 
II. De Lib. Arbit. § 14. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 13 

hatred of God ; or, that the more a man strives 
to dispose himself for grace, the more griev- 
ously he sins ; let him be anathema."* 

Calvin, Zvvingli, and their adherents even go 
so far as to assert that Adam could not help 
falling, because God had decreed that he should 
fall.f 

Americans, are you ready to admit doctrines 
like these, inculcating, as they do, the most 
blasphemous libel on the justice and sanctity 
of God, and the principle best calculated to 
banish all consolation from the soul ; leaving 
man to groan helplessly under the weight of 
irremediable wickedness, and under the irresisti- 
ble tyranny of an unjust God? 

THE REDEMPTI02T. 

In misfortune we long for relief. When 
relief is given, we are consoled ; when loss is 
changed into gain, and good drawn out of evil, 
our consolation rises in proportion to our 
former sorrow. This, if we accept the Catholic 
doctrine, is an image of the nature and the 
effects of the Redemption. 

«- Cone. Trid. Sess. VI. can. VII. 

j- Calvin. Instit. 1. i., cap. 18, § 2. ; 1. iii., c, 23, § 8 and 4. 
Boza, Adv. Calum. Genev. 1861. Zwinglius, De Provid. c 
T) and 6. 



14 THE CHARACTER 

The Church teaches, that, to redeem us from 
original sin and its consequences, Christ the 
Son of God assumed our nature and died for 
us on the Cross ; that, by His merits, we are 
really freed from sin, and by the infusion of 
supernatural sanctifying grace into our souls, 
are again united to God, and become per- 
sonally pleasing in His sight. You will not 
deny, that it is an immense consolation for 
man, after having been tortured by remorse, 
and weighed down by the sense of unworthi- 
ness, to know that he has been really pardoned, 
that he is once more really free from guilt, truly 
pUre and holy before His Maker. 

The Catholic Church further teaches, that 
man co-operates in his justification by co- 
operating, with perfect freedom, with the grace 
of God, which prompts and strengthens him to 
do penance and amend his life. To be allowed 
to co-operate with the grace of God, renders 
his consolation still greater, for it makes him 
conscious of a meritorious personal triumph 
over his own passions and over the power of 
Satan. 

Indeed, in the Redemption we have gained 
far more, infinitely more, I might almost say, 
than we lost in Adam : hence, the triumphal 
chant of the Catholic Church in the solemn ser- 
vice on Holy Saturday, " O happy fault, which 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 15 

has deserved so great and glorious a Re- 
deemer." For our Saviour has not only con- 
quered Satan, and released us from his power; 
He has not only raised us to a supernatural 
state of grace, like that in which Adam was 
constituted; but He has, besides, enabled us to 
practice higher virtues than Adam could have 
practiced in the state of unfallen nature, and 
prepared for us a proportionately higher glory 
in heaven. By the union of the Divine with 
the human nature He has raised our nature 
above the angelic choirs, and communicated to 
us a grace far more powerful and of much 
higher dignity than was originally imparted to 
our first parents. A far higher field of virtue 
is opened before us in the accomplishment of 
the Christian law, and the keeping of the evan- 
gelical counsels. According to the Catholic 
doctrine, the natural consequences of the fall, 
concupiscence and the sufferings of life, may be 
turned by us, if we will, into occasions of new 
and most glorious merits and proportionate 
reward in eternity, so that our condition, after 
the fall, may even, in some respect, be envied 
by the angels, who could never, by sufferings, 
prove their obedience and their love of God. 
Thus the Catholic doctrine allows us to taste 
the full sweetness of the Redemption, to enjoy 
its efficacy, and have a real share with our 



16 THE CHARACTER 

Saviour in His triumphant resurrection from 
the dead and complete victory over the powers 
of darkness. 

Of this consolation Protestantism deprives 
you. The doctrine of Luther, Calvin, and 
their adherents, is, that no sin, whether original 
or personal, is ever remitted ; but is, at best 
only covered by the merits of Christ.* Accord- 
ing to their doctrine, man, after being justified 
through Christ, remains in sin as much as 
before, with this only difference, that, after his 
justification, he is not liable to be punished for 
his sins. For a man who loves his God it is 
hard to conceive a more distressing doctrine : 
to such a man the offence is more hateful than 
the punishment, and he finds the thought intol- 
erable, that God, though unwilling to punish 
him, yet should allow him to be no better in 
His sight than a whitened sepulchre. Besides, 
it is a genuine Protestant doctrine, that man 
has no share whatsoever in thus covering his 
sins, because he has altogether lost his free- 
will, and is as passive in the act of his justifi- 
cation, to use one of Luther's illustrations, as 
the pillar of salt into which the wife of Lotw^as 
changed. f After his justification, as before it, 

* Luther. Expos. Epist. ad Galat. Solid. Declar. III. § 
I.'». Calvin. Instit. 1. III. c. ii. 
t Lutlier, in Genes, cap. xix. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 17 

man remains completely incapable of perform- 
ing any really good work, or of gaining any 
real merit before God. 

Thus Protestantism would leave no true state 
of justice on earth ; it would banish the hea- 
venly consciousness of innocence regained ; it 
would make us believe, if possible, that the 
wounds inflicted by the fall are so deep, that 
the blood of the Redeemer cannot heal them ; 
our ruin so hopeless that the mercy of the 
Almighty cannot repair it. Such is the second 
stage of its distressing system. Do you think 
it preferable to the Catholic view ? 



THE CHUECH. 

In all our undertakings, and especially when 
great interests are at stake, we wish for secur- 
ity. In the pursuit of knowledge, we long for 
certainly. When some important object is to 
be attained, we are glad to find that the way 
to attain it, is obvious and free from danger, 
or, if uncertain, that we have some faithful 
friend to guide us. 

When there is question, not merely of a 
temporal object, but of eternal life, it is of 
infinitely more importance to us to know with 
certainty the way that leads to it, and that the 



18 THE CHARACTER 

way should be secure. No questions can be 
imagined of greater importance for us, than 
these : Am I, or am I not, in the way that leads 
to salvation? Am I, or am I not, in the true 
Religion ? Is my faith infallibly certain, or is 
it not? Is there any answer to be found on 
earth, that can satisfy my mind on these all- 
important questions ? Protestants and Catho- 
lics agree that the answer is to be sought for 
in the true faith. But here another question 
arises. Is there any authority on earth, that 
can fully clear up all doubts, and give unerring 
certainty, on these momentous questions ? 

The Catholic answers in the affirmative. 
The Catholic doctrine is, that Christ has in- 
stituted an infallible Church, to whose guar- 
dianship He has intrusted His doctrines and 
the means of salvation, and which He estab- 
lished forever. That Church is the Catholic 
Church. As the infallible guardian of the 
Word of God, whether written or unwritten, 
she teaches whatever Christ has taught her ; 
as His infallible representative, she min- 
isters to men all the means of salvation which 
He has given her. The Catholic doctrine 
furthermore asserts, that the mission of the 
Catholic Church, as the infallible teacher and 
unerring guide of men, will remain unaltered 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 19 

to the end of time. Through her Christ unites 
the earth to heaven ; and that union, like 
her mission, will last as long as the world. 
" Behold, I am with you all days, even to the 
consummation of the world."* 

In the Church we have a guide to whom we 
can intrust our salvation with the same security 
as to Christ Himself. " He that heareth you, 
heareth me."f " And I say to thee. That thou 
art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my 
church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail 
against it. And I will give to thee the keys of 
the kingdom of heaven ; and whatsoever thou 
shalt bind on earth, it shall be bound also in 
heaven : and whatsoever thou shalt loose on 
earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven." 

Trusting to the guidance of the Catholic 
Church, the loudest and the most ignorant 
among the faithful, is as secure of his faith, as 
certain of the way of salvation, as the highest 
and the most learjied. Through his own special 
pastor, placed over him by his bishop, every 
Catholic is in communion vvith his bishop, and, 
through the bishop, in communion with the 
legitimate successor of St. Peter, on whom 

«- Matt., xxviii. 20. 

^ Luke, X. 16. 

t Matt., xvi. 18, 19. 



20 THE CHARACTER 

Christ Himself conferred the care and guidance 
of His whole flock: "Feed my lambs, feed my 
sheep."* •' 1 have prayed for thee, that thy 
faith fail not : and thou being once converted, 
confirm thy brethren. "f United to the suc- 
cessor of St. Peter, ever}^ one of us has the 
right to appeal confidently to the celebrated 
canon of St. Ambrose, " Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia 
— Where Peter is^lhere is the Church.''^ 

The whole history of the Catholic Church, 
confirms the Catholic in his faith, and in the 
consolation that he is unmistakably in the way 
of salvation. We look back through eighteen 
centuries, all bearing witness to the truth of 
our faith. At the very birth of the Catholic 
Church, and in the first three centuries of her 
existence, we have seventeen millions of 
martyrs, our elder brethren in the faith, all 
sealing with their blood the very same Catholic 
faith that we profess to-day. The testimony of 
the first three centuries is continued through 
all centuries : in all ages, the divinity of the 
Catholic faith has been testified by the blood 
of true martyrs, all children of the Catholic 
Church. In our own days, the plains and cities 
of Corea, China, Tonquin, Cochin-China, Syria, 

* Jolin, xxi. 15, 17. 
t Luke, xxii, 32. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 21 

reddened with the blood of martys, have re- 
newed to the world the testimony given to all 
past generations. 

We look back through eighteen hundred 
years of triumph. The Catholic Church"* has 
not only survived all persecutions ; she has 
found powerful and bitter enemies in her own 
bosom, and has survived them all. Heresy, 
leagued with the power of kings and emperors, 
has not ceased to wage against her a more deadly 
war than even the early persecutors. The Catho- 
lic Church still stands, where she was placed by 
the Hand of the Almighty, calm upon the rock 
of ages, upheld by the promises of eternity, the 
waves ever raging madly against her, and for- 
ever breaking at her feet. Everything has 
changed around her; her faith and her spiritual 
power remain unchanged. 

The testimony of hosts of martyrs, extending 
through all ages, the perpetuity of the Catholic 
Church in spite of all attacks, would be amply 
sufficient to authorise the faith of the Catholic, 
even had he no other proof; but another host 
of witnesses, the Saints of the Catholic Church, 
a countless number of Catholics, men and 
women distinguished and admired for their 
heroic virtues, give him an additional security 
that his faith is Divine. The annals of the 



22 THE CHARACTER 

Catholic Church, and the annals of the world, 
have recorded the long roll of her apostolic men, 
whose voice has carried the glad tidings of sal- 
vation to every nation on the globe. Upon 
every page of the history of the Church and of 
the world for eighteen centuries, the Catholic 
finds recorded the names of men and women, 
illustrious for their beneficence, and whose 
unobtrusive greatness of virtue has attracted 
the veneration of the world. Along the whole 
line of by-gone Christian ages, the Catholic 
meets with a genealogy of men, doctors, bishops, 
popes, eminent for talent, genius, power, virtue, 
holiness, such as no other society can exhibit. 
Rome, in particular, from St. Peter down to 
Pius IX., has been illustrated by a succession 
of pontiffs, whose virtues, zeal, and heroism, 
shine through her history like the stars in the 
firmament, and mark her triumphal progress 
through her exile in time to her home in 
eternity. 

To sum up, as a Catholic I am infallibly 
certain that my faith is true, because the 
Catholic Church is infallible ; I am infallibly 
certain that I am in the way of salvation, 
because the Catholic Church that guides me, 
cannot err. My faith is confirmed by the tes- 
timony of millions of martyrs ; the guidance in 
which I trust has led millions of the most illus- 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 23 

trious of our race to heaven. They all followed 
the same path of faith which I follow, and 
walking in their footstep?, I can not doubt, that 
the path is a safe one, the true path that leads 
to heaven. This is my consolation, great in 
proportion to the eternal objects which we 
pursue. 

Of this consolation Protestantism utterly 
deprives you. In your Protestant view, the 
Church is only an aggregate of many separate 
members. Every Protestant explicitly holds, 
that there is no infallible Church : he regards 
the claim of infallibility in matters of faith as 
an insult to God, accuses the first Church of 
apostasy, and brands her with the name of 
Antichrist. 

In your opinion, Christ has instituted no 
infallible ecclesiastical authority. The funda- 
mental doctrine of Protestantism is, that God 
has ordered all men to search the Bible, and to 
make out of it a faith, each for himself, in the 
best way he can ; that the private interpretation 
of the Bible replaces, and ought by right to 
replace the authority of the Church, and must 
be held as the only Rule of Faith. 

This is a distressing doctrine, for it makes it 
absolutely impossible to arrive at any certainty 
in matters of faith. As I shall show more fully 
afterwards, you cannot even prove that the 



24 THE CHARACTER 

Bible is the Bible, or is an inspired book, unless 
you abandon your Rule of Faith, and appeal to 
the authority of the Catholic Church. Unless 
you assume the infallibility of the Church, who 
has given you the Bible, and defined that it is 
the word of God, I confidently challenge you to 
produce a single proof of the inspiration of the 
whole Bible, such as will satisfy even your own 
mind. In the whole Scripture, you cannot show 
a single passage, in which it is revealed that the 
whole Bible is inspired ; and, while you admit 
the Bible alone as your Rule of Faith, and 
reject Tradition and the authority of the Catho- 
lic Church, you will look in vain elsewhere for 
your proof. But even granting, for the sake 
of argument, that you have proved the inspira- 
tion of the whole Bible to the satisfaction of 
intelligent men, whence do you derive any in- 
fallible certainty that you understand it, and 
that you do not err essentially in the faith 
which you extract from it ? 

Here lies the great difference between the 
consoling security of the Catholic, and the dis- 
tressing insecurity of the Protestant. The 
Catholic relies on the infallibility of the Church, 
and hence is infallibly sure that his faith is 
Divine. The Protestant, as such, having 
nothing beyond his private interpretation to 
rely on, cannot attain to any thing higher than 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 25 

a mere private opinion very liable to error. 
The Catholic rests on the infallible promise of 
Christ, that " the gates of hell shall not prevail 
against the Church." The Protestant has to 
meet and cannot get rid of the fearful denun- 
ciation of Christ, " If he will not hear the 
Church, let him be to thee as the heathen, and 
the publican."* The Catholic sails securely in 
the imperishable bark of Peter. The Protestant 
clings to a wretched plank, thrown out upon a 
raging sea : perhaps he may be saved by it : 
this is the utmost limit of his hope. The 
Catholic Church can confidently say to her 
children, " Trust to my guidance. I am of God. 
Let your lives correspond to your faith, and 
5"ou will be saved." Protestantism, throwing 
into the hands of its adherents a venerable book 
dishonored by a thousand conflicting interpre- 
tations, says to them, " Read for yourselves, 
and discover the truth, if you can ; make out 
your own faith, and hold fast to it, if you are 
able ; perhaps it will save you." Can the 
human heart be placed in a more distressing 
condition ? At best, you can only say, " It 
may be that I have succeeded in discovering 
the truth ; but it may also be that I have failed, 

* John, xxvi. 17. 

4 



26 THE CHARACTER 

and, if so, what is to become of my soul in 
eternity ?" 

Some fanatic Protestant religionists, to 
escape the uncertainty inevitably attending all 
purely human opinions, have set up the dx)c- 
trine of Private Inspiration; they affect to 
believe in an inward teaching of the Holy 
Spirit, and would fain persuade themselves, 
that this imaginary guidance is as safe as the 
infallible authority of a Divinely commissioned 
Church. This pretended inspiration they 
themselves ultimately resolve into mere feel- 
ing, which, of all sources of error, is the most 
open to alarming illusions. Indeed, it is hard 
to conceive how any man of common intel- 
ligence can be so rash, as to build his faith, and 
his hope of heaven on so delusive a foundation. 
All the world knows to what extravagance some 
Protestant sects, especially the Methodist,* 

* I here wish to direct your attention again to what I 
have already remarked in the Preface. I only censure 
errors in doctrine, not persons. It is my firm conviction 
that in the ranks of the Methodists, especially American 
Methodists, there are, as well as in other sects, large num- 
bers of honest and very respectable persons. They only 
indulge in excitements like those referred to in the text, 
because they feel an immense want of some signs of cer- 
tainty about their salvation ; and being uninstrueted in the 
Catholic doctrine, they give way to such delusions. If, in 
the course of the discussion, I mention the Methodists more 



OF PROTEST ANTISxM. 27 

allow themselves to be carried, in consequence 
of the principle of Private Inspiration. The 
excitement, on some occasions, amounts to 
real religious intoxication. I hope the ex- 
pression will not offend any one. I appeal to 
the impression which must occasionally have 
been made on every one of my readers, on 
passing by a Methodist camp meeting, and 
hearing the discordant singing, the howling, 
and screaming, and witnessing the jumping 
and contortions, in which those inspired reli- 
gionists indulge. Every sober-minded man 
must feel, that such disgraceful exhibitions 
have, by no means, the sign of a Divine influ- 
ence. The religious intoxication vanishes ; 
fanaticism gives way to sober thoughts ; doubts 
return with fresh vigor upon the poor victim of 
delusion ; his faith, that delighted him yester- 
day, appears to him uncertain, and racks his 
mind to-day. 

Now Methodism is but one of the countless 
sects that have been disputing, for three cen- 
turies, about the meaning of the Bible, and 

frequently than other Protestants, it is not because I have a 
less friendly feeling towards them, but because they are the 
most nuraerous and active Protestant denomination in this 
C'^iiutry. 



28 THE CHARACTER 

have pretty nearly exhausted all imaginable 
extravagances and all possible contradictions. 
Such is the result at which you have arrived. 
You have set up the principle of Private Inter- 
pretation as your only Rule of Faith. The legi- 
timate consequence has been your conflicting 
sects, and as many conflicting opinions as there 
are independent minds in Protestantism. The 
aspect of so much discord, so much confusion, 
so much uncertainty, can surely present no 
comfort to the human soul, born for the truth, 
and invincibly desirous of possessing it in 
security. It is clear that a religious system 
w^hich unavoidably leads to such results, neces- 
sarily engendering in its own bosom an endless 
multiplicity of contradictory sj'^stems, cannot 
have come from God, and, therefore, cannot be 
true. God is Truth: the Spirit of Truth can- 
not reveal contradictions. Truth, like God, is 
one and unchangeable : a faith, therefore, that 
comes from God, must be one, like Him, and 
cannot change. Your faith has changed, and 
is ever changing. It cannot, therefore, be true. 
Luther himself shuddered at the sight of the 
vast variety of inconsistent tenets that had 
sprung out of his principle, even in his own 
day, and, at times, could not help confessing 
that he saw in them an evident mark of error 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 29 

and falsehood. To-day the state of thinga is 
worse than ever. Where, at the present time, 
is the Protestantism of Luther and the early 
Reformers ? I question whether a single Pro- 
testant can now be found, who holds the same 
doctrines with them in all respects. Protest- 
antism bears upon its face, more clearly marked 
than ever, the unmistakable seal of error. 

Here, then, my Protestant friends, you have, 
on one side, the sublime attitude of the Catho- 
lic Church, claiming to be Divinely commis- 
sioned and Divinely guided, her faith infallible 
and unchangeable, her chief on earth repre- 
senting her unity and maintaining it ; a Church, 
whose unerring guidance gives absolute security 
in the way of salvation. On the other side, 
you have the fluctuating conduct of your sects, 
endless changes of opinion which no logic can 
reconcile, interminable disputes, confessions of 
faith framed to-day, and obsolete to-morrow, 
teachers opposed to teachers, leaders without 
authority or influence, except that founded on 
momentary fashion or caprice ; and hence no 
possible security in the way of salvation. 

With or without the Bible, learned or un- 
learned, the Catholic is secure. Protestantism 
leaves the ignorant without resource, and the 
learned without certainty ; the ignorant cannot 



30 THE CHAEACTER 

avail themselves of the principle of private 
interpretation, and the learned avail themselves 
of it in vain. To pretend to give even a toler- 
able interpretation of the Bible, learning is 
required : the highest learning, left to its own 
private interpretations, has not succeeded, 
never can succeed, in framing a reliable system 
of faith, vi^hilst the claim of Private Inspiration 
set forth by some of the Protestant sects, is but 
a vain and desperate effort to possess Infalli- 
bility by infatuation rather than by authority. 
The contrast between Catholicity and Pro- 
testantism, in regard to the teaching authority, 
needs no further comment. In point of com- 
pany, Protestantism is equally unsatisfactory. 
The Catholic treads in the footsteps of millions 
of men illustrious for virtue, of whose salvation 
there can be no doubt. Can you point to a 
parallel series of Protestant martyrs, confessors, 
doctors, fathers, virgins, benefactors of man- 
kind, all unquestionably eminent for heroic 
Christian virtue, and of whose salvation you 
can entertain no doubt ? If you can, please let 
us have a list of their names. Even if j^ou 
claimed any Protestant saints, would you be able 
to show that they held the very same faith with 
you ? This you have no means of determining 
for there is neither a common Protestant infal- 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 31 

lible authority to which all submit, nor a com- 
mon Protestant standard of faith to which all 
conform. The Catholic is sure that every 
Catholic saint believed as he does, neither 
more nor less, because every Catholic believes 
what the Church teaches as of faith, neither 
more nor less. You cannot know of a single 
one of your great men, whether he held the 
same faith with you or not. 

Luther evidently made a dangerous experi- 
ment, to say the least, when he left the high- 
way by which millions, for fifteen centuries, 
under the infallible guidance of the Church, 
had gone to heaven, and chose to grope in a 
by-way, with his private notions for his only 
guide, and no means of determining whether 
his course led to heaven or to perdition. Time 
has only made the experiment more alarming. 



THE MEANS OF SALVATION. 

When a great object is to be attained, it is 
not enough to know how to attain it : we must 
also have the means. It vvoald be of little use 
to know the way of salvation, if we had no 
effectual means of saving our souls. In the 
way of salvation we have many wants, which 
the grace of God alone can supply. 



32 THE CHAEACTER 

In the Catholic Church every want of the 
soul is amply provided for. The Catholic doc- 
trine on this subject is, that for every general 
want Christ has instituted in His Church a 
particular means of grace. These means are 
the Sacraments. Of the consolations to be 
derived from them none but a practical Catho- 
lic can form any adequate idea. 

It is the doctrine of the Catholic Church, that 
Christ instituted seven Sacraments, each of 
them corresponding to a great general neces- 
sity, and all of them together answering all the 
spiritual w^ants of the soul. As the super- 
natural life bears an analogy to the natural, so 
the means of grace have an analogy to natural 
necessities. In the natural order, man is born, 
has need of strength and nourishment, and of 
medicine in sickness ; in the supernatural 
order, he is spiritually born by Baptism, 
strengthened by Confirmation, nourished by 
the Holy Eucharist, restored to spiritual health 
by the sacrament of Penance. Besides, as there 
are two principal conditions of Christian life, 
each with peculiar and important duties, and 
consequently with grave and peculiar wants, 
the Clerical state and that of Wedlock, there 
are two other sacraments, Holy Orders and 
Matrimony, the latter sanctifying marriage and 
giving grace to fulfil its duties, the former con- 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 33 

ferring Ecclesiastical power with grace to use 
it worthily. Lastl}*. for the hour of death, 
when man stands in greater need than ever of 
spiritual strength and consolation, and his fate 
for eternity is to be decided by his last actions, 
Christ, according to the Catholic doctrine, 
instituted the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. 

Of these seven sources of grace, Protestant- 
ism has kept only two, or rather none. Pro- 
testants, indeed, generall}^ hold Baptism to be 
a Sacrament, though many among them look 
upon it as a mere rite conferring no grace. 
But whether you admit it as a Sacrament or 
not, the Sacrament of Baptism does not pro- 
perly belong to Protestantism, for, as I shall 
show a little further on, there is only one true 
Church, viz., the Catholic Church, the gate of 
which is Baptism, and so every one truly bap- 
tized, becomes a member, not of a Protestant 
sect, but of the Catholic Church. With regard 
to the Holy Eucharist, Protestants have re- 
tained it only in name, for rejecting Holy 
Orders, they have no true Bishops, and there- 
fore no true Priests, clothed with the power of 
changing bread and wine into the Body and 
Blood of Christ. 

But allowing, for the sake of argument, that 
you have the Sacraments of Baptism and the 
Holy Eucharist, in substance as well as in 
5 



34 THE CHARACTER 

name, still it remains true, that the Protestant 
doctrine deprives you of the consolations of 
these and all the other Sacraments of the 
Catholic Church. This I will show at some 
length. 



THE SACRAMENTS. 

I. BAPTISM. 

The Catholic Church teaches that Baptism 
really remits sin, and washes away every stain 
of sin ; that man, " born again of water and 
the Holy Ghost," is raised by it to a state of 
supernatural grace, and enters the glorious 
condition of the children of God, becoming in a 
peculiar manner entitled to call God his 
Father, and vested, as the heir and brother of 
Christ, with a right to heaven. At the moment 
of Baptism, he is associated with the angels, as 
a future citizen of heaven. By the sanctifica- 
tion of baptismal grace, he is rendered capable 
of meriting before God, of increasing his merits 
daily and hourly throughout the whole course 
of his life, and by the increase of his merits, 
heightening the crown won for him by the 
Mood of his Redeemer. This very consoling 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 35 

doctrine must, I think, come home to every 
heart. 

Of this Protestantism deprives you, for it 
acknowledges no real remission of sin by Bap- 
tism, but at best only a covering of sin by the 
merits of Christ, and rejects personal merit, 
with every thing else that follows from the 
Catholic doctrine. Many sects look on Baptism 
as a mere ceremony, conferring no grace, right, 
or effect whatsoever. Hence, it is no wonder 
that many Protestants have come to regard 
Baptism with complete indifference. It is no 
wonder that there are large numbers in Pro- 
testant countries who do not care to be bap- 
tized at all, or who are baptized late in life, 
and then either invalidly through some essen- 
tial defect in the administration, or unworthily 
through the lack of the necessary disposition on 
their part. This is especially the case in 
America. Millions of men in this country, 
calling themselves Christians, and members of 
the various Protestant denominations, have 
never been baptized. Protestantism is ending 
in the desolation of heathenism. 



II. CONFIEMATION. 

A true Christian wishes to lead a life worthy 



36 THE CHARACTER 

of his faith, and earnestly desires the strength 
necessary to do so. 

The Catholic Church teaches that the Sacra- 
ment of Confirmation confers the strength 
which he needs. Whoever receives that sacra- 
ment worthily becomes a living temple of the 
Holy Ghost, a well-armed champion in the cause 
of Christ. If he remains faithful in co-operating 
with the grace which he has received, the Holy 
Ghost will continue to dwell in him, " the Spirit 
of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of 
counsel and of fortitude, the Spirit of know- 
ledge and of godliness, and the Spirit of the 
fear of the Lord." 

Of this consolation Protestantism deprives 
you, for it rejects the Sacrament of Confirma- 
tion, and, instead of it, tells you to renew your 
promise to live like a Christian, without giving 
you any new strength to do so, and even whilst 
denying that you can do so at all. The last 
part of this assertion I proved above, and shall 
more fully prove in the sequel. Why, indeed, 
should man be strengthened by Divine grace, 
if, as genuine Protestantism teaches, he has no 
free-will and cannot merit before God? 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 37 

III. THE UGLY EUCHARIST. 

A true Christian loves his Redeemer. Like 
St. Augustine, he wishes to have lived in the 
time of Christ, to have been permitted to 
see Him, accompany Him, live near Him. 
Christ Himself said, " Blessed are your eyes, 
beause they see, and your ears, because they 
hear." Who would not wish to have been one 
of His chosen disciples, or to have been 
allowed, like Mary, to live under the same roof 
with the incarnate Son of God for thirty years? 
Whoever loves Jesus as his Redeemer and his 
God, cannot help wishing that He were still on 
earth. Would I were with Him and He with 
me. Would I could fall at His sacred feet, 
like St. Mary Magdalene, and, when forgiven, 
speak with Him face to face, like a child with 
its father, like a fiiend with his friend, like one 
rescued from death with his deliverer, like a 
criminal to his judge, on whose sentence his 
liberty and life depend. 

All this is realized in the Catholic Church. 
The Catholic doctrine is, that, under the sacra- 
mental veils, Jesus Himself is present, in the 
same flesh and blood, the same Divinity and 
Humanity, as when He lay a new-born infant 
in the manger, as when He rested on the lap 



38 THE CHARACTER 

of Mary, as when He labored with Joseph at 
Nazareth, as when He instructed the people, 
and entered Jerusalem in triumph : the same 
God-Man, who now sits in the highest heaven, 
at the right hand of God the Father, adored as 
the Lamb of God by all the angels and saints. 
Wherever there is a tabernacle in a Catholic 
church, in which a consecrated Host is kept, 
there Jesus is personally present. This is an 
ineffable consolation for a heart that loves 
Jesus, and longs to be with Him : the real 
presence of Jesus Christ makes a heaven of 
every Catholic church on the whole earth. 

When the Jews wept for grief at the sight 
of the second Temple, the prophet Aggeus con- 
soled them by the promise, that the presence 
of the Redeemer would render the glory of the 
second Temple greater than that of the first. 
Yet the presence of Jesus in the second Tem- 
ple was to be but momentary. His permanent 
presence communicates an immeasurably 
higher degree of majesty and holiness to our 
churches, and, indeed, renders our poorest log 
chapels as venerable as the dome erected by 
the genius of Michael Angelo. Whether the 
Catholic kneels on a tesselated floor, or on the 
bare ground, he finds a never-failing source of 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 39 

consolation in communing with Jesus in the 
Blessed Sacrament. 

In the old Temple, there was nothingholier than 
the Ark of the Covenant; still, the high priest 
alone was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies, 
and that only once a year. In Catholic churches, 
our Redeemer Himself dwells personally ; we 
are all allowed and invited to come near Him, 
every day and every hour, and to converse with 
Him face to face. 

The cloud which came down into the first 
Temple at its dedication, filled Solomon and 
all the people with the most consoling feelings 
of confidence, awe, and adoration : the Catho- 
lic, kneeling with a lively faith and a loving 
spirit before the sacred species that conceal 
his Saviour, is filled with far more consoling 
sentiments of adoration, filial fear, and con- 
fidence, towards Him who thus deigns to dwell 
with men forever. 

Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament was pre- 
figured by the cloud which stood between the 
camp of Israel and the camp of the Egyptians, 
illumining the night for the Israelites, and serv- 
ing as their guide to the land of promise. 
Moses might well say to the people, " Neither 
is there any nation so great, that hath gods ?o 
nigh them, as our God is present to all our 



40 THE CHARACTER 

petitions." The Israelites had but the figure; 
we enjoy the reality ; we enjoy the literal 
accomplishment of the promise of our Lord, 
" Behold I am with you all days, even unto the 
consummation of the world." 

Of this heavenly consolation Protestantism 
has utterly deprived you. Protestantism main- 
tains that Jesus is no longer on earth. Open 
all your meeting-houses and churches, and show 
us where He is. He is not there : He has gone 
from amongst you never to return, for you 
acknowledge no priesthood, and have no one 
amongst you vested with the power of Conse- 
cration. You may build churches broader than 
St. Peter's, towers higher than the towers of 
Fribourg, Strasburg, and Vienna : they will 
be, after all, but empty houses, idle shows of 
grandeur, desolate, cheerless, chilling piles of 
stone, for He, on whom the beauty, the life, the 
inspiration of a Christian church depend, Jesus 
our Saviour does not dwell in your churches. 
It is infinitely more pleasant to worship kneel- 
ing on the bare floor, where our Lord is pre- 
sent, than to be seated in velvet-cushioned 
pews in your most sumptuous church edifices. 

But, besides the Real Presence, the doctrine 
of Transubstantiation brings along with it other 
ineffable consolations. Jesus, under the species 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 41 

of bread and wine is, also the Sacrifice of the 
New Law, and the food of our souJs. 

A Christian, who truly loves his Saviour, 
would esteem it an unspeakable favor to have 
been permitted to stand near the Cross on 
Calvary, with Mary the Mother of God and 
with St. John ; or to embrace the Cross, like 
Mary Magdalene, and weep for his sins whilst 
Christ was dying to redeem sinners. The 
Sacrifice of the Cross is to the Gospel what the 
sun is to the world ; it is the source and the 
centre of our Religion. To that Sacrifice all 
generations of old looked forward for their deli- 
verance. In that Sacrifice the Christian 
Church had her origin; from it, under the 
symbol of water and blood, gushed forth all 
the graces of Christianity ; in it our faith, our 
hope, the life of our souls take their birth and 
have their sustenance. 

Is there a Christian traveler, no matter how 
weak his faith, who, on visiting Jerusalem and 
the church of the holy Sepulchre, and standing 
on the ground where the Cross once stood, has 
not felt his love for Jesus quickened and his 
sorrows lightened ? There are not a few 
among you, who have traveled to Jerusalem, 
and can bear witness that such were their im- 
pressions : indeed several among you have 



42 THE CHARACTER 

published their testimony of it to the world. 
Never yet, said an American traveler some 
time ago, had I bent my knee in prayer; never 
yet had a tear of devotion moistened my eye : 
but when I came to the hallowed ground where 
my Saviour once hung bleeding on the Cross, I 
was forced to bend the knee ; I sank down 
upon the floor, and wept. 

Catholics need not travel so far to experi- 
ence far more consoling emotions. Wherever 
there is an altar on which the Sacrifice of the 
Mass is oftered, there is Calvary, there is the 
Cross, there is the Sacrifice of Calvary. Who- 
ever understands the Catholic doctrine will 
easily conceive that a fervent Catholic must 
find in the Mass an unfailing source of the 
sweetest consolation. 

The Catholic doctrine is, that the Mass is the 
same Sacrifice as the Sacrifice of Calvary ; not 
that Christ dies again, but that He continues to 
offer forever, in an unbloody manner, the same 
Sacrifice of the Cross, which was the comple- 
tion of all sacrifices. It is the fulfilment of the 
prophecy of Malachias : " From the rising of 
the sun even to the going down thereof, my 
name is great among the Gentiles, and in 
every place there is sacrifice, and there is 
offered to my name a clean oblation."* 

Malach., i. 10, 11. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 43 

The glorious worship of the blessed, the 
burning love of adoring seraphs,the adoration, 
praise, thanksgiving, love of all the hosts of 
heaven, since the dawn of their creation and 
throughout eternity, are as nothing to this 
Sacrifice of infinite value, to the adoration, 
thanksgiving, atonement, praise, intercession, 
love, which the incarnate Son of God Himself 
offers to His heavenly Father on our altars. 
With this worship, the only worship fully 
worthy of God, our own adoration is united, and 
made acceptable to God through Christ. 

Thus the poorest Catholic Church on earth is 
like another heavenly Jerusalem, where the 
Lamb appears slain, as He appeared to St. 
John ; the faithful on earth join their voices 
in the new canticle of heaven : " Worthy is the 
Lamb that was slain to receive power, and 
divinity, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, 
and glory, and benediction. Because Thou 
wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God, in 
Thy blood, out of every tribe, and tongue, and 
people, and nation."* 

This Sacrifice throws over our service a 
light, a life, a majesty, a solemnity such as no 
other Religion can lay claim to. This is often 
felt and acknowledged even by Protestants, 

* Apoc, V. 12, 9. 



44 THE CHARACTER 

especially by such as are acquainted with the 
meaning of our impressive ceremonies, and 
understand how each rite refers to the great 
Victim on the altar. 

This great Sacrifice of adoration, atonement, 
thanksgiving, and prayer, Christ offers for the 
salvation of all men, and of each one in parti- 
cular, as truly as if each one was alone in the 
world. As often as he assists at Mass, a fer- 
vent Catholic draws new graces from the 
wounds of his Saviour sacrificed for him in his 
presence ; a most consoling accomphshmentof 
the prophecy : " You shall draw w^aters with 
joy out of the Saviour's fountains."* 

Protestantism deprives you of this consola- 
tion. It denies the perpetuity of the Sacrifice 
of Christ, overthrows the altar, strips worship 
of its majesty, and despoils public service of 
the infinite merit w^hich ours possesses in the 
Divine Sacrifice. Instead of altars, it gives 
you a bare pulpit ; mere preaching and sing- 
ing, instead of the great Sacrifice ; the ministry 
of men alone, instead of the Real Presence of 
Christ. No wonder that your churches are not 
thronged like ours, nor visited for devotional 
purposes out of stated days and hours ; or that 
they are even sometimes closed during a great 

* Isa., xii. 3. 



OP PROTESTANTISM. 45 

part of summer. Beyond the recognition that 
public worship is due to God, there is nothing 
in your religious meetings, which you may not 
have as well in your own houses, or even 
better. You assemble to hear a sermon ; but 
you might read a sermon at home, and per- 
haps abetter and a more edifying one, than the 
rant, or political discourses, containing not an 
allusion to religion, to which you are some- 
times forced to listen, and which only disgust 
you or provoke you to anger. You pray and 
sing in common ; but at home you might, per- 
haps, pray with less distraction, or with your 
families sing the praises of God with more 
devotion. Your churches lack what no devo- 
tion can supply, that which constitutes a church 
and distinguishes it from an ordinary building, 
the altar and the Divine Sacrifice. 

In intimate connection with the Real Pres- 
ence, we have our numerous religious Festivals ; 
another great source of consolation to the 
Catholic. A Christian would wish to have 
been present at the great events wrought for 
his salvation. In the Catholic Church, his 
desire is fulfilled, as far as possible. The 
Catholic Church celebrates those glorious events, 
as if they were passing before our eyes, as you 
may see by reading the Catholic prayers, espe- 
cially those in the Mass, appropriated to each 



46 THE CHAKACTER 

Festival. In this the Catholic Church conforms 
to the spirit of God, with whom there is neither 
yesterday, nor to-morrow, but an everlasting 
l^resent. 

With us the ecclesiastical year is like the 
tree of Paradise, laden with the richest fruits in 
all seasons, and always renewing the vigor of 
our faith, the freshness of our spiritual life. 

Of all our beautiful festivals, you have 
hardly retained anything beyond a trace of 
their former existence among your Catholic 
ancestors. You celebrate Christmas, and per- 
haps Easter also, in your houses and at your 
tables more than in your churches. Such cele- 
brations are not peculiarly Christian ; in this 
country even Jews sometimes have a Christmas 
tree for their children. Your religious celebra- 
tions are cold indeed, when compared with the 
holy joy with which the Catholic Church cele- 
brates the Festivals and seasons of Advent, 
Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, Corpus Christi. 
All-Saints, All-Souls, and the days dedicated to 
our Lord or His blessed Mother. Most of 
these holy-days and seasons are common 
week-days among you. Whilst Catholics com- 
memorate the mercies of God, and the mys- 
teries of our Divine Lord's life, vou are often 
laboring hard to amass what you cannot retain 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 47 

and reject consolations which would bear you 
fruit for eternity. 

I now come to the greatest of all the conso- 
lations imparted by Christ through the Sacra- 
ment of the Holy Eucharist. A heart that 
loves Christ ardently, longs to be intimately 
united with Him, or even, like St. Paul, 
*' desires to be dissolved and to be with Christ." 
It is true, the intimate union here referred to 
by St. Paul belongs only to heaven ; but still, 
there is a union with Christ, possible on earth, 
more intimate than the human mind could have 
conceived, had it not been revealed. 

It is the doctrine of the Catholic Church, that 
in Holy Communion Jesus enters our interior, 
really and substantially, body and soul, as God 
and Man, so that each one of us may say with 
the Apostle, " I live, now not I, but Christ 
liveth in me," not only by faith, but by the real 
presence of Christ within us. I need not stop 
to point out the numberless sweet consolations 
contained in this doctrine. 

The Church teaches, that by Communion 
Jesus is united with us in so intimate a manner 
that human language is not adequate fully to 
express it. The holy Fathers often compare 
this union to the union of light with air or of 
heat with wax. They remark that Communion 
places in us the germ of immortality, and that 



48 THE CHARACTER 

the oftener and the more worthily we receive 
the Body and Blood of Christ, the greater will 
be our glory in heaven. Whoever receives 
Christ v/orthily, may say with the Spouse in 
the Canticles, " My beloved is mine, and I am 
his." 

This consolation Protestantism denies you. 
It has, at best, left you but a shadow of Com- 
munion. The following are a few of its doctrines 
on this subject. Communion only signifies the 
Body of Christ ; we only receive Christ by faith ; 
the Body of Christ is really present, but only at 
the moment of Communion. This last opinion 
Protestants cannot consistently hold, for, admit- 
ting no Priesthood, they cannot claim any 
ministers having the power to change bread 
and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. 
Whenever you partake of what is called among 
you the Lord's Supper, you receive bread and 
wine, nothing more. No wonder your Com- 
munion gives you no consolation, and that few 
among you care to receive it. Nothing is 
gained by receiving it, nothing lost by abstain- 
ing from it. What you should lament as one 
of your greatest misfortunes, is the loss you 
have incurred by your separation from the 
Catholic Church, the loss of the Real Presence 
and of the true Catholic Communion, the 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 49 

supreme good of man on earth. Protestantism 
has robbed you of it, and left you, in this 
respect, no better off than infidels or Jews. 
" We have an altar, whereof they have no 
power to eat who serve the tabernacle."* 

IV. PENAKCE. 

Man is conscious of his frailty. Loaded 
with guilt, stung with remorse, in dread of the 
judgments of God, a Christian who has fallen 
into mortal sin after his baptism, would surely 
be glad that Christ had instituted a secure 
means of obtaining pardon. A friend seeks 
relief by revealing his secret sorrows to his 
friend ; the sick disclose their secret disorders 
to physicians ; men apologize for their offences 
to each other ; criminals sometimes, goaded 
on by remorse, give themselves up to public 
justice, or after being condemned, seek to un- 
burden their conscience by a public confession. 
The advantages of a confession of faults to a 
friend who can advise and instruct us, were 
noticed even by Seneca and other pagan phil- 
osophers : so deeply is the principle of Con- 
fession seated in our nature. Nothing, indeed, 
can be imagined more in harmony with our 

* Heb., xiii. 10. 
6 



50 THE CHARACTER 

frail nature, or more desirable, especially for a 
Christian, than Confession under proper safe- 
guards. I have offended God. Would there 
were on earth some representative of Christ, to 
whom I might with safety confess my sins, and 
receive a sure pledge of Divine pardon ; a man 
whom I could trust as a friend, a guide, a father, 
the physician of my soul; whose counsels 
might aid me to persevere in virtue, and who 
would never, under any circumstances reveal 
any of my failings. 

The wish is fulfilled in the Catholic Church. 
Like the rainbow after the Deluge, the Sacra- 
ment of Penance is a sign and a pledge of 
reconciliation between God and repentant sin- 
ners. 

By the Sacrament of Penance, sins are truly 
forgiven : the condition of pardon is Confes- 
sion, accompanied by a sincere contrition and 
a firm resolution of amendment. The Con- 
fessor is the representative of Christ, the friend, 
guide, father, and physician of our souls. 
Such is the doctrine of the Catholic Church, 
founded on the explicit words of Christ : " Re- 
ceive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you 
shall forgive, they are forgiven them, and whose 
sins you shall retain, they are retained."* 

* John, XX. 22, 23. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 51 

Words cannot be more decisive. " If there is 
any thing Divine in the Catholic Church," says 
Leibnitz, though himself a Protestant, "it is 
Confession, or the Sacrament of Penance." 

Catholics are certain that the sins which 
they confess will never be revealed. The lips 
of the Priest are sealed, and the seal cannot be 
broken. Under no circumstances can a Priest 
disclose what he has heard in Confession. 
After Confession, he cannot even speak with 
the penitent of the sins he has confessed, with- 
out the penitent's express permission. You 
know how completely the secret of Confession 
is kept : you have had public proofs of it in 
your courts of law. 

A Protestant traveler in Italy had always 
believed that Priests do not keep the secret of 
Confession. While at Rome, he determined to 
obtain a positive proof of his opinion. Having 
managed to get a certificate of ordination, 
which had belonged to a Priest, he put on the 
ecclesiastical dress, went to a church, and 
asked for a Confessor. He accused himself of 
saying Mass without being ordained, and de- 
clared that he would continue to do so, as it 
was the means by which he made his living. 
The Priest, of course, refused him absolution. 
The Protestant then following him to the 



52 THE CHARACTER 

sacristy, asked leave to say Mass, which the 
Priest, after having examined his papers, 
gave him without hesitation. The Priest 
with his own hand prepared the chaUce 
and the vestments. For a moment, the Pro- 
testant looked on in silent astonishment, and 
then exclaimed, " Now I see undeniably that 
Priests do keep the secret of Confession. I 
want to be a Catholic." He was received into 
the Church, and soon experienced the consola- 
tion of having made a real Confession. 

Protestantism deprives you of this consola- 
tion, for it rejects Confession, and holds that it 
is enough to confess to God. But where is it 
written that this is sufficient ? Why has Christ 
said, " Whose sins you shall forgive, they are 
forgiven ; and whose sins you shall retain, 
they are retained?" "Were these words 
of Christ spoken to no purpose," asks St. 
Augustine, " and are the keys which Christ 
has given to the Church, without power, that 
you should say, I confess only to God?" 
Would it not have been unworthy of Christ to 
have made use of the solemn ceremony of 
breathing upon His Apostles, and to have 
given them the Ploly Ghost, with power to for- 
give or to retain sins, if, after all, He meant to 
give no such power ? Would it not have been 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 53 

equally unworthy of the Divine Intelligence to 
have given them a discretionary power to remit 
or to retain sins, and not to have obliged 
Christians to a full confession of their sins, 
which is the only means to determine whether 
the sins are to be forgiven or to be retained ? 
Then the words of Christ, would only have 
amounted to this : Receive ye the Holy Ghost 
to no purpose ; receive ye the power to forgive 
or to retain sins, to no purpose, for no one, 
after all, need apply to you to be forgiven : it 
is enough for men to confess to God. Who 
would think of attributing such a grant to our 
Lord ? And how could Confession have the 
advantages to which I have referred above, if 
we do not open our conscience fully to the 
Confessor, as to a physician, guide, friend, and 
father ? 

Let me relate an incident which happened 
some years ago in Paris. A Protestant lady, 
married to a Catholic Count, always noticed in 
him a peace of mind and heart to which she 
was a total stranger. On asking him the cause 
of it one day, she received for answer, " I am 
a Catholic, and Catholics can open their hearts 
to the Priest, the Representative of Christ. 
Confession is the cause of my peace," Not 
long after, one evening, when her mind was 



54 THE CHARACTER 

more disturbed than ever, the Countess sent for 
a Priest, and expressed a desire of making her 
confession to him. Finding that she was a 
Protestant, the Priest told her he could not 
comply with her request, because, as a Pro- 
testant, she was incapable of receiving absolu- 
tion. She became a Catholic, and found in 
Confession that peace of conscience which she 
had been unable to account for in her husband, 

I have been a Priest and Missionary for 
many years, and have heard several hundred 
thousand Confessions. Nowhere have I wit- 
nessed such signs of consolation as in the con- 
fessional. Often at the moment of absolution, 
the delight of being again reconciled to God, so 
overpowers the penitents, that, amidst sobs and 
tears, their hearts seem ready to break with 
excess of joy. I grieve to think that mere pre- 
judice prevents you from enjoying a similar 
consolation. 

A man once came to me in a rage, and 
asked whether it was true that I had induced 
his daughter to make a general Confession. I 
replied, " My dear sir, Priests do not answer 
such questions. But I should think that you 
must have ten times more need of making 
a good general Confession." This answer 
made him still more furious. " Calm yourself 
sir," I continued. " Do you know what a 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 55 

general Confession is ? Have you ever made 
one?" " No, sir." " Then I will tell you. A 
general Confession is the confession of all the 
sins of your whole life from your childhood up 
to this hour. I do not know you, but I cannot- 
help thinking that many things must be heavy 
on your heart. How old are you ?" " Forty- 
eight." " Well, sir, how easy it would be for 
you to cast off the burden of forty-eight years, 
and have it buried in the abyss of God's infi- 
nite mercy by a sincere Confession." For a 
few moments he was silent and thoughtful, and 
then said, " You are right. When can I make 
my Confession ?" I took him immediately to 
the church. He went home another man, 
grateful, and with joy depicted on his counten- 
ance. 

If Methodists sometimes pretend to a similar 
sentiment of forgiveness, it is only a temporary 
delusion. The sentiment is merely personal, 
not warranted by any Sacrament or sign insti- 
tuted by Christ. If they spoke sincerely, they 
would confess, that they themselves cannot 
rely on the feeling, as remorse invariably 
returns soon with as much keenness as ever. 
Even, if they could believe themselves for- 
given, they could not, on Protestant principles, 
believe in any thing more than a mere cover- 
ing of guilt and freedom from punishment, 



66 THE CHARACTER 

not a real cleansing of the soul. There is no 
consolation in reconciliation without true for- 
giveness, and guilt that remains on the soul 
must continue to burden and torment it. 

Indulgences. — It is a Catholic doctrine, that, 
though truly absolved from sin and eternal 
pains, we often remain subject to temporal 
punishments for our sins : this is a check on 
relapse, worthy of the Divine Wisdom, and 
tempers Mercy with Justice. Nathan, after 
saying to David, " The Lord hath taken away 
thy sin, thou shalt not die," added, " Neverthe- 
less, because thou hast given occasion to the 
enemies of the Lord to blaspheme for this 
thing, the child that is born to thee shall surely 
die."* Like David, we should wish to be freed, 
if possible, even from the temporal punishment, 
or to make up for it by meritorious works. 

The Catholic Church teaches, that the tem- 
poral punishment can be made up for by meri- 
torious works, or remitted by Indulgences. To 
gain a plenary Indulgence, it is an indispensable 
condition, as every Catholic knows, to be truly 
contrite and fully resolved to amend one's life, 
so as not to harbor any wilful attachment to a 

«- 2 Kings, xii. 13, 14. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 57 

single sin. Hence Indulgences are, also, a 
powerful means of Christian perfection. 

Protestantism deprives 3'ou of this consola- 
tion, and this powerful means of virtue. It 
rejects Indulgences, and denies that the Catho- 
lic Church can grant them; as if Christ had 
not said, " Whatsover you shall loose upon 
earth, shall be loosed also in heaven ;" and as 
if the power of forgiving sins, — " Whose sins 
you shall forgive, they are forgiven them," — 
did not include the inferior power of remitting 
the temporal punishment due to sin. 

It is to be deeply regretted, that many Pro- 
testant ministers are, especially on this subject, 
constantly doing all they can to distort the 
Catholic doctrine, and render it odious. They 
never cease repeating, that to grant Indul- 
gences is to grant an unbounded license to sin, 
though every Catholic child could inform them, 
that to gain an Indulgence and to sin, are as 
incompatible as truth and falsehood, as heaven 
and hell. The Catholic doctrine is, that out of 
the state of grace, there is no Indulgence what- 
ever, and that a perfectly pure heart, is 
necessary for gaining a plenary Indulgence. 
That a Protestant should reject Indulgences 
we can easily conceive : to be consistent 
with himself he must do so. Not believing a 
7 



58 THE CHARACTER 

real convermon possible, he does not believe in 
Purgatory ; he fears Hell alone. 

V. EXTKEME UNCTIOIT. 

A Christian, if true to his vocation, lives, not 
for fleeting time, but for eternity, which is 
rapidly drawing nigh. His chief care is to die 
well, to end his life in the friendship of God. 
He remembers his last end, and the warning 
of the Holy Ghost, " If the tree fall to the 
south or to the north, in what place soever it 
shall fall, there shall it be."* He remembers 
that " all is well, that ends well," that eternity 
depends on his last struggle, heaven or hell on 
his death. Not one of us fully knows what it 
is to die, but we all feel a natural repugnance 
to death ; while the Christian is assured that, 
in our last moments, Satan does his worst to 
overpower us, and draw us with him into 
eternal ruin. 

In that last and awful struggle, the soul 
needs extraordinary assistance. Has Christ 
given to His Church any such extraordinary 
assistance ? 

The Catholic Church teaches that He has 
done so in the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. 

* Ecele., xi. 3. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 59 

That Sacrament has a twofold effect, one on 
the body, and another on the soul. 

In regard to the body, it confers relief, or 
perfect recovery. Facts are constantly occur- 
ring which bear witness to this efficacy, as 
promised by St. James : '' Is any man sick 
among you, let him bring in the priests of the 
church, and let them pray over him anointing 
him with oil, in the name of the Lord : and the 
prayer of faith shall save the sick man, and 
the Lord shall raise him up, and if he be in 
sins, they shall be forgiven him."* Even 
Protestant and Infidel physicians have often 
acknowledged the efficacy of Extreme Unction 
in this respect. In Catholic countries they are 
anxious that the sick should receive the last 
Sacraments in due time, because they find that 
the repose which results from the reception of 
Extreme Unction, serves to give efficacy to the 
medicine which the sick person receives. 

The spiritual effects of this Sacrament are 
still more certain and immediate. According 
to the Catholic doctrine, it removes the remain- 
ing effects of sin, and fortifies the soul in its 
last struggle. 

Protestants, on visiting their sick Catholic 
friends, are frequently convinced by their own 

* James, v. 14, 15. 



60 THE CHARACTER 

observations, of the wonderful calm and forti- 
tude imparted by Extreme Unction to the 
dying. Catholic Priests frequently meet with 
Protestants in hospitals, who are converted to 
Catholicity, by the evident efficacy of Extreme 
Unction. It has often happened, in the course 
of my ministry, especially while I attended the 
Commercial Hospital in Cincinnati, that Pro- 
testant patients called and entreated me 
to give them Extreme Unction. They had 
witnessed the extraordinary peace and 
strength of mind which descended from Heaven 
on their Catholic fellow-sufferers, at the 
moment they received that Sacrament ; and 
many Protestants, from their desire of receiving 
the last consolations of the Catholic Church, 
became Catholics on their death-beds. 

This reminds me of another fact still more 
remarkable, and, by itself alone, going far to 
prove that the Catholic Church is the true 
Church, and that earnest and sincere inquirers, 
acknowledge it as such, as soon as they over- 
come, with the Divine assistance, the prejudices 
of education, habit, and public opinion. Hun- 
dreds, I might say thousands, of Protestants 
become Catholics in the last awful hour, when 
illusions vanish and things appear as they are. 
There are few Priests engaged in the ministry, 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 61 

who cannot testify to this from their own 
experience. Now, Americans, I would ask 
you, and I would ask all the Protestants in the 
world, whether they have ever heard or known 
of a Catholic becoming a Protestant on his death- 
bed ? I never have ; and neither you nor your 
descendants to the end of time shall ever know 
or hear of a single one. 

The Catholic Church enjoins it on her 
ministers, as a strict duty, to assist the dying 
with the most loving care, the most watchful 
solicitude, the tenderest zeal of which they are 
capable. You know the heroic zeal of our 
Priests ; the whole country has witnessed it in 
times of cholera and yellow fever. No sooner 
does a Catholic fall dangerously ill, no matter 
how contagious his disease, than the Priest 
hastens to his bedside, and, if possible, remains 
with him to the last moment. He stands by 
his side, like a consoling angel at the threshold 
of eternity, whispering confidence in God's 
mercy, until the soul takes its flight, and then, 
following it with the prayers and blessings of 
the Church, in her name he invites the angels 
and the saints to descend and accompany the 
departed soul to heaven. 

Protestantism deprives you of this consola- 
tion. It rejects Extreme Unction and all our 



62 THE CHARACTER 

last consoling ministrations. Just at the 
moment when the aid of the Church is most 
needed, you are forsaken : your ministers can 
give you no comfort but that of exhorting you 
— to help yourselves. Many of you have 
experienced it, all have witnessed it, and none 
of you expect any thing better. I ask you, 
Americans, when an epidemic breaks out 
among you, who are amongst the first to secure 
their safety by flight ? Is it not very frequently 
your ministers ? And who are the first to 
hasten, even from a distance, to places infected 
by the contagion ? Is it not Catholic Priests, 
and Catholic Sisters of Charity ? Ask Norfolk, 
New Orleans, and other cities ; every man in 
them will tell you. 

VI. HOLY ORDERS. 

A Christian who has a lively faith in the 
Church and in the dignity of her sanctuaries, in 
the Divinity of her Sacrifice and the holiness 
of her Sacraments, feels the propriety and 
necessity of intrusting sacred things to sacred 
hands. The ancient Pagans, obeying the 
instinct of our common nature, had a Priest- 
hood set aside for their temples. Under the 
Old Law, though the Mosaic rites and sacrifices 



OF PROTESTANTISM. G3 

were only figures of things to come, yet God 
had set apart one of the twelve tribes for the 
service of the Temple, and had chosen, out of 
this tribe, one family, which was empowered 
to offer up sacrifice. In the Catholic Church, 
the holiness of the sanctuary demands far more 
imperatively, that an order of men should be 
consecrated to serve at the altar and administer 
the Sacraments. The highly responsible offices 
of the Priest, require likewise that he should 
receive special graces for the faithful discharge 
of his duties. 

Has Christ provided for this ? The Catholic 
Church answers that He has done so in the 
Sacrament of Holy Orders. 

The solemn and sublime ceremonies of a 
Catholic Ordination are in complete harmony 
with the solemn duties and sublime ministry 
of the Priest. I wish all of you could witness 
a Catholic Ordination. It would leave on 
your minds an impression of sanctity, which 
years could not efface. Every prayer, every 
rite in a Catholic Ordination has a deep signi- 
ficance, and, indeed, breathes a superhuman 
majesty and a heavenly spirit : the unction of 
the Holy Spirit is diffused throughout the whole. 
The newly ordained Priest, often perceptibly, 
feels the affluence of Divine grace pervade his 



64 THE CHARACTER 

whole being, making his Ordination felt, and 
rendering him vividly conscious of the new 
power with which he is invested. He has 
always the assurance of actual graces that will 
enable him to be true to his vocation, and 
becomes conscious, in a manner which he could 
not have anticipated, that he was chosen from 
amongst his people, like Aaron, and has 
become a representative of Christ on earth, a 
mediator between Him and men, a priest, 
teacher, shepherd, friend, and father of His 
people. 

In accordance with his high dignity, is the 
life of continence, which the Church imposes 
upon the Priest. That life perfects in him the 
image of Christ, who, as St. Paul says in his 
Epistle to the Hebrews,* is a High Priest 
according to the order of Melchisedech, with- 
out father, mother, or genealogy. By his life of 
continence, and by it only, the Priest is able, 
without any domestic care to impede his action, 
to make himself all things to all men, to become 
the spiritual father in Christ of all his congre- 
gation, and to command in an unexceptionable 
manner their full confidence. 

Protestantism refuses you the consolation of 

* Heb., V. 10 J vii. 3. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 65 

having ministers thus sanctified and absolutely 
set apart for the Divine ministry, for Protest- 
antism rejects Holy Orders. Its ministers are 
without any higher than a mere human ordina- 
tion and a mere human authority. Their 
mission, like that of civil officers, emanates 
from men, not from God. A Protestant mini- 
ster is the minister or agent of his congrega- 
tion : they pay him for his services, and 
dismiss him when it suits them. If he gives up 
his profession, he becomes a mere layman. 
His station, compared with the exalted position 
of the Catholic Priest, looks worldly, common, 
and low indeed. 

As Protestant ministers acquire no essentially 
new character in their ordination, so as to be 
forever distinct from laymen, every one may 
be admitted to the ministry. Very often, ' 
especially in this countr}^ in the comparatively 
numerous sect of Methodists, we find merchants, 
farmers, carpenters, blacksmiths, artisans of 
every trade, assuming the office of preachers on 
Sunday, and returning to their usual avocations 
for the rest of the week ; and that not only in 
country towns and districts, but in the largest 
cities of the Union. 

No wonder Protestantism enjoins on its 
ministers no mode of life above that of laymen. 



66 THE CHARACTER 

But the consequence is, that, being burdened 
with wives and children, Protestant ministers 
become a burden to their congregations, and 
take more care of their household, as they are 
in duty bound to do, than of their flocks. I 
have read in a newspaper a complaint of an 
Episcopalian Bishop, that he either had to apply 
for a divorce, or give up the idea of making 
episcopal visitations, as his wife's jealousy 
would not allow him to absent himself from 
home. 

VII. MATRIMONY. 

As the Priest holds the position of spiritual 
father to the Christian people, and needs parti- 
cular graces to fulfil the peculiar duties and 
meet the peculiar difficulties of his position ; 
so parents require special graces in the duties 
and difficulties pertaining to their condition. 

The Christian who is called to the state of 
Matrimony, feels the necessity, and desires the 
grace of this Sacrament, for on his conduct in 
Marriage depends his happiness or his misery 
in time and in eternity. 

Has Christ provided any special grace for 
the state of Matrimony ? The Catholic Church 
answers that Pie has done so by raising Matri- 
mony to the dignity, and giving it the efficacy. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 67 

of a Sacrament. This state which would seem 
altogether worldly, has been spiritualized and 
sanctified : indeed, Christ has so exalted it as 
to make it the symbol of his own union with 
the Church. 

Thus the grace of the Redemption, as under- 
stood by the Catholic Church, reaches to every 
condition of life, and sanctifies and exalts them 
all. 

Another point of Catholic doctrine, w^hich 
goes further still to sanctify Marriage, and 
powerfully tends to make husband and wife 
regard each other with a holy awe, is the indis- 
solubility of the bond of Matrimony : the 
married couple are united forever, as Christ is 
united with His Church for eternity. Thus the 
whole state of the Christian family is sanctified. 

Protestantism deprives married persons and 
the family of this consolation, for it rejects 
Matrimony as a Sacrament. In the Protestant 
view, the matrimonial contract is only a civil 
act, and Matrimony nothing more than a union 
of man and wife in the natural order. Hence, 
Protestantism permits divorce and sanctions 
new alUances, thus paving the way to unre- 
strained licentiousness, by furnishing the vici- 
ous with an easy means of uniting with other 
parties, whenever passion prompts them to do 
so. Hence, stripped of all its Christian sane- 



68 THE CHARACTER 

tity. Matrimony but too frequently becomes a 
source of scandal. Cases have been made 
public, in which women, after having had five 
or six husbands, in consequence of repeated 
divorces, at last returned to their first husband 
after a new divorce. Does not Marriage, in 
this way come to have more the character of a 
brutal connection, than of a Christian alliance? 
Indeed, Protestantism seems but too much 
inclined to sanction even polygamy, as was 
actually done by the Baptists in Luther's time, 
and by Luther himself, along with Melanchthon 
and Bucer, when these founders of Protestant- 
ism gave leave to the Landgrave Philip of 
Hesse to have two wives at the same time. 
Mormonism, too, is one of the noJZ^ plants grown 
in the hotbed of Protestantism. 



GOOD WORKS. 

By the grace of the Sacraments, and by the 
actual graces of the Holy Ghost, a Catholic 
feels himself strong enough to resist every 
temptation, able to overcome all obstacles to 
virtue, to become more virtuous every day, 
more and more like to Christ by the daily 
practice of good works, to increase in merit 
before God, every hour and moment, and to 
gain an ever increasing crown of glory by his 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 69 

merits. This is truly a great consolation for a 
man who loves God, and is desirous of improv- 
ing in virtue. '' I can do all things in Him who 
strengtheneth me."* I can do all things, if I 
only have the will to follow Christ with the 
fervor of the Saints. If I only have the will, 
" my present tribulation, which is momentary 
and light, will work in me above measure an 
exceeding weight of glory." 

Protestantism deprives you of this consoling 
and powerful motive for practicing virtue, by 
teaching you that you can do no good works at 
all, even with the aid of Divine grace, and that 
what appears right in your eyes is a sin before 
God. 

Many among you, unacquainted with the 
original doctrines of Protestantism, and Pro- 
testants onl}'^ in name, may be disposed to 
accuse me of calumny. To prove my assertion, 
I make some quotations from the works of the 
early Reformers. Luther says, " Every good 
work, though performed as well as possible, is 
still a venial sin."f '' Yea, every action of the 
just man is damnable and a mortal sin."J 

* Philipp., iv. 4. 

f Assert. Omn. Art. 0pp. Tom. II., p. 325. 
X Cp. Antilatom. (Confut. Luther. Rat. latom.) fol. 406, 
407, 



70 THE CHARACTER - 

Melanchthon is just as explicit. He says, "All 
our actions and exertiqjis are sins."* " Yea, 
even to eat, to drink, to work, to teach, all this 
is sin."f Calvin teaches the same doctrine: 
" Never yet has a pious person done a pious 
work, which was not damnable in the sight 
of God."]: 

How, with such a prospect before them, can 
men have any zeal for Christian sanctity or 
genuine virtue ? The certainty of offending 
God by our best works, must inevitably deaden 
and destroy, in the very root, every desire for 
virtue. The doctrine, if generally acted on, 
must sweep every vestige of virtue from the 
earth. In all cases, when adhered to in any 
degree, it is enough to sadden and deject, and 
degrade in his own estimation, every honest 
man, who believes in God and longs to be 
pleasing in His sight. 

If you ask the Reformers, What hope can a 
man have of saving his soul, if he is not able 
to do any thing towards saving it ? You pro- 
mise him salvation, and command him to 
hope ; but on what ground is his hope to rest? 

* Melanchth. Log. TheoL, p. 108. 
t Ibid, p. 92. 

X Calvin. Instit. 1. II. c. viii. § 59 ; 1. III. c. iv. § 28, and 
c. xiv. § 11. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 71 

The early Reformers answer, and consistent 
Protestants at the present day agree with them, 
that man, as he is thoroughly wicked, can only 
be saved by faith. If he has the faith, sin can- 
not injure him, and he has no need of good 
works. Some of you may put this down as an 
unheard of calumny, and indignantly ask me 
when and where the Reformers ever uttered 
such abominable doctrines. 

Open Luther's works, for instance his " De 
Captivitate Babylonica^^ and you will find 
this doctrine taught and inculcated.* In 
a letter to Melanchthon, his friend and co- 
Reformer, he uses the following language : 
" Sin as much as you can, but believe still 
more firmly. We must sin as long as we live. 
It is enough to believe firmly in Christ, the 
Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the 
world. From Him sin will not separate us, 
were we to commit murder and adultery a 
thousand times a day.f 

Some of Luther's followers went so far as to 
assert that good works are dangerous to salva- 
tion, on the false ground that they impair the 
saving confidence of faith. Nicholas Amsdorf, 

* De Captiv. Babyl. I. II., p. 26. 

f Epist. Di Mart. Luth. a Joan. Aurifabro coUectse torn. 
I. Jena, 1556. 



72 THE CHARACTER 

an old friend of Luther's, maintained this, in the 
year 1559, as genuine Lutheran doctrine.'' The 
doctrine is held by some Calvinist Protestants to 
this day. Some time ago, I met with one who 
defended it, a Swiss Calvinist preacher, with 
whom I happened to travel to St. Louis. As 
regards Americans, I hope there is not one 
among them who takes such abominable view^s 
of the Christian Religion. Yet it must always 
remain true that the Reformers inculcated 
them as the pure doctrine of Christ ; and, with 
such leaders, Protestantism must, to say the 
least, look exceedingly suspicious. 



THE STATE OF MAN AFTER DEATH. 



PURGATORY. 

Our life on earth will soon be past, and 
eternity will quickly begin for us. A Christian 
may not be conscious of any mortal sin 
unatoned for, yet he knows that the eye of God 
discovers imperfections even in His saints ; he 
feels that he is not worthy of Christ, and has 
no resource except in God's infinite mercy, and 

* Cfr. Calv. Instit. 1. III. c. 12. 86. Item Luther. Dc 
Cfr. Bab. 1. ii., p. 284, and Edit. Lips. L xiv., p. 128. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 73 

in the hope that, if he has not reached stainless 
perfection here, God will purify his soul in a 
future state. 

The Catholic Church affirms that his hope is 
not a vain one. She teaches that there is a 
place of expiation, called Purgatory, where 
souls are perfectly cleansed from every stain 
of sin ; and further that the souls in Purgatory 
remain united with the jiving in the bonds of 
a holy love, and that this union is a real and 
efficacious, not a fruitless, union; that the 
suffering souls are relieved, and even released, 
in view of our intercessions and good works, 
and especially by the Sacrifice of the Mass. 
The Catholic Church teaches, besides, that 
those souls, grateful for our assistance, inter- 
cede for us in their turn, especially after their 
admittance into heaven. 

It is a great consolation to be able to give 
such efficacious proofs of our love to our 
departed friends. It lessens our sorrow for 
their loss ; it strengthens Christian hope in us, 
and permits us to taste all its sweetness. It 
has, besides, the highly beneficial effect of 
frequently fixing our thoughts on our last end 
and an impending eternity. The Holy Ghost 
has said, " It is a holy and wholesome thought 

to pray for the dead that they may be loosed 

8 



74 THE CHARACTER 

from sin."* All experience shows that it is 
both holy and consoling. 

I question whether more consoling tears are 
ever shed, than those that flow in prayer over 
the graves of the departed. Ask a loving son, 
or daughter, when they rise from their knees at 
the graves of their parents ; ask a widow or 
mother bending in tears over the tombstone of 
a husband or son, whether any thing on earth 
has power to console them, half as much as 
prayer for the departed. Indeed, merely to see 
others praying at the graves of their relatives 
and friends, is enough to make us share, by 
Christian sympathy, in the visible consolation 
that refreshes the mourners. 

Protestantism takes away this consolation. 
It denies Purgatory, declares prayers for the 
dead useless, and stigmatises them as super- 
stitious. It leaves the full bitterness of death 
rankling in the hearts of the survivors. Be- 
sides, the Protestant doctrine contradicts all 
just notions of merit and punishment, and 
entangles you in a net of inconsistencies. For 
if there is no Purgatory, a man who dies with- 
out being in mortal sin, yet not without failings, 
cannot go to Heaven, nor yet can he be con- 

» 2 Mach., xii. 46, 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 75 

demned to Hell, since nothing defiled can enter 
Heaven, and it would be injustice in God to 
condemn a man to Hell who is not guilty of 
any grievous transgressions. Whither then 
shall he be sent? 

On this point, an infidel could convict Pro- 
testantism of error. If you admit Heaven and 
Hell, he might say, you are forced either to 
admit Purgatory, or to maintain that the slight- 
est failing is a mortal sin deserving Hell. The 
Reformers, as we have seen, maintained the 
latter alternative. But I greatly doubt whether 
any of you are ready to go so far, and would 
say that every slight fault, such as a useless 
word, or a momentary irritation, is a grievous 
sin and deserves eternal punishment. Every 
intelligent man must come to the conclusion 
that there is a middle place. Infidels would 
sooner deny the existence of Hell than that of 
Purgatory. In fact, the Universalists do so, 
and many modern Protestants agree with them, 
for the Hell which they admit not being eternal, 
is nothing more than Purgatory. The denial 
of Purgatory is as inconsistent with reason as 
it is distressing. It is as repugnant to the 
mind as to the heart, to think that our departed 
friends, whom we cannot believe to have been 



76 THE CHARACTER 

without failings, are all lost, and beyond the 
reach of our prayers. 

THE COMMUITIO]^ OF SAINTS. 

As Christians we believe that all who are 
free from sin at the moment of death, enter 
Heaven. We should naturally wish to remain 
in communion with them, if possible ; to make 
them acquainted with our wants and sorrows, 
and receive from them some efficacious assist- 
ance, just as we remain in communication with 
our friends in distant countries, and are united 
with them in feeling, affection, and mutual 
services. 

The Catholic Church affirms that there exists 
a Communion between us and the blessed ; 
that the Saints know our wants, sympathize in 
our joys and sorrows, and pray for us, because 
they love us. They have reached the haven, 
and now extend a helping hand to their 
brethren still on the stormy ocean. We might, 
of course, pray to God alone, but God, in his 
infinite wisdom and love, has united all his 
children, in time and in eternity, in the bonds 
of a mutual, intimate, active, efficacious love. 
This is the order of Divine Providence. As we 
pray for the souls in Purgatory, so the Saints in 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 77 

Heaven intercede for us, and the prayers of all 
are efficacious. This beautiful Communion 
with the Saints carries along with it the recol- 
lection of their virtues, and warns us to secure 
a part in their glory for ourselves by imitating 
their example. 

There is in this Communion of holy love 
a consolation which all must acknowledge. 
Wherever faith exists, consolation is sought in 
mutual prayer. We ask each other's prayers, 
and find a comfort in the thought that those 
who love us pray for us and with us. Virtuous 
parents and children are consoled by knowing 
that each fulfills his duty of holy love by pray- 
ing for the other. The consolation of Catho- 
lics often exhibits itself visibly, when a Priest 
promises to remember them at the altar. The 
Apostle himself asked the prayers of the newly 
converted ; and the early Christians were 
united in the joys of mutual prayer, as well as 
in mutual love. There is a mutual consolation 
even in death, when parents can close their 
eyes with the assurance that their children will 
pray for them, and when children hear from the 
dying lips of their parents the parting promise 
to remember them before God in heaven. 
There is a consolation for all the faithful in 
the thought, that in losing a brother or dear- 



78 THE CHARACTER 

loved friend on earth, they gain an affectionate 
intercessor in heaven. 

To be united to the Saints in heaven, to 
be one heart and one soul with them, is a 
consolation great in proportion to the purity, 
and power, and glory of the Saints. The balmy 
breath of a pure life is wafted from the highest 
heaven into our inmost souls ; glorious wit- 
nesses watch our struggles, powerful protectors 
cover us with their shields, victorious heroes 
spur us on to victory by their example. 

Saints, in the strictest sense of the word, 
those whose heroic virtues God has attested by 
manifest miracles, are a source of consolation 
peculiar to the Catholic. Protestants are often 
forced to acknowledge and admire the great- 
ness of their virtues. They all belong to us : 
Protestants claim none of their own. We 
possess, as I have remarked above, a countless 
host of Saints, virgins, confessors, priests, 
bishops, martyrs. To be of the same Church 
with these numberless heroes of the Cross, to 
be in intimate, active, efficacious Communion 
with them, this, assuredly, is an exceedingly 
great consolation. 

Of all this consolation Protestantism has 
utterly despoiled you. It denies our Com- 
munion with the Saints, maintains that the 



OF PROTESTANTISiM. 79 

Saints neither know our wants nor hear our 
prayers, and even pretends that their prayers 
for us would be an injury to Christ. Protest- 
antism has forgotten, or does not wish to 
remember, what faith so explicitly teaches, that 
all that the Saints are, and all they are able to 
do for us, they are, and are able to do, only in 
and through Christ. All the children of Christ, 
whether living or dead, whether on earth or in 
heaven, are united in Him, one in Him through 
love, and this intimate union with each other, is 
brought home to us in the Communion of 
Saints. Protestantism breaks up the consoling 
union of the children of God, removes the 
Saints from us to an unapproachable region, 
and leaves no trace of a living, active Com- 
munion between the Church on earth and the 
Church in heaven. Death, if we would believe 
Protestantism, ends all Communion between 
brethren. The dead are dead, is the climax of 
the icy, deathlike, and deadening doctrines of 
Protestant theology. 



Here I close my comparison. Whoever has 
given the preceding pages an attentive perusal, 
will, I hope, acknowledge that I have fully 
made out the charge that Protestantism is a 



80 THE CHARACTER 

Religion of Distress, that it has rejected the 
consoling doctrines of the Church, and substi- 
tuted for them most distressing tenets. I am, 
therefore, justified in asking you with deep 
astonishment and unfeigned compassion, How 
could your ancestors reject the Catholic Church 
for such a Rehgion ? How can their descend- 
ants have bUndly clung to it for three cen- 
turies ? You will agree, that, on the supposi- 
tion of both the Catholic and Protestant 
doctrines being mere human inventions, there 
would be good reasons, founded on real wants, 
for becoming Catholics, but not a single valid 
reason for becoming Protestants. 

A learned Protestant, Lessing, has said, 
" Considering the faith of a Catholic Priest, I 
can imagine no man happier than he must be." 
This is the truth. Happy, indeed, is he, and 
happy beyond the measure allotted to other 
men, who has been ordained to be the dispenser 
of the mysteries of grace under the New Law, 
and the representative of the mercies of Christ 
to men. I need only point to the privilege of 
oiFering up in real Sacrifice to God the Body and 
Blood of the Redeemer. If you conceive what a 
Catholic priest is, you must s-ee that it is a sur- 
passing consolation for a man purchased by 
the blood of Jesus, to be permitted to stand in 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 81 

SO intimate a union with Him, and to offer 
such a Sacrifice for his own salvation and the 
salvation of the world. The Priest is placed on 
Calvary and near the Cross, in a manner given 
to none but him. 

I shall say nothing of the consolations he 
derives from the administration of the other 
mysteries of grace, at whose source he stands. 
I will only remark, that Lessing might just as 
well have said, " Considering the faith of a 
Catholic^ I cannot imagine a happier man than 
a practical Catholic." Lavater, another cele- 
brated Protestant, said as much in his " Por- 
table Library for Friends :" " I consider a 
practical Catholic as one of the most honorable 
and blessed of men." He is blessed indeed, 
for he enjoys in the certainty of his faith, in the 
infallibility of its promises, in the consolations 
it administers, that "peace of God, which sur- 
passeth all understanding," which the world 
cannot give, and which Protestant sects desire, 
but seek in vain. 

I here recall to mind a fact which happened 
at Mihvaukie, during a renovation of the 
Mission. A physician, a man of education, 
followed me to m}" room after a sermon, and 
threw himself into an arm-chair in an evident 
state of despair. I asked him, " What do you 
9 



82 THE CHARACTER 

want of me, sir." " Comfort, comfort," he 
answered, " I want consolation and peace, and 
cannot find it in my Religion." " What is 
your Religion ?" " I am a Protestant." " Have 
you the courage to examine ?" *' Certainly." 
" Then you will soon be a Catholic, and find 
consolation." And so it proved. 

Learned Protestants, such as Leibnitz, Clau- 
dius, Haman, Jacobi, Schiller, Goethe, Novalis, 
Wolfgang Menzel, seem to have anticipated 
the consolation which the Catholic religion 
would have given them. They longed for it, 
but had not the resolution to brave public 
opinion, and avail themselves of the consola- 
tions that would have secured their happiness 
here and hereafter. 

It happened, while I lived at Vienna, that a 
celebrated Protestant minister mounted the 
pulpit on Good Friday, to preach a sermon on 
the Passion of our Lord. He said in a mourn- 
ful tone of voice, " Ah, what a death, my 
brethren ! I ought to comfort you, but alas ! I 
myself have no consolation. Amen." With- 
out adding another word, he left the pulpit. 
This theatrical display had but too much truth 
in it. The death of Christ has no power to 
comfort us, if we refuse to approach the 
streams of consolation that flow from it. That 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 83 

minister spoke as if standing in spirit on Cal- 
vary, and pronounced judgment against him- 
self and against the whole system of Protest- 
antism. Luther himself declared that " he had 
never derived any consolation from his new 
Religion, and that he could not draw any cpn- 
solation from the death and resurrection of 
Christ, in consequence of his want of faith."* 

Protestantism is, and must forever be, a 
Religion without consolation, a Religion of 
Distress. It appears such, especially, when its 
doctrines are compared with the doctrines of 
the Catholic Church. 

The only consolation Protestantism as such 
has to offer, is a wicked one, — Sin, but believe. 
In thus stigmatizing Protestantism, and in all 
I have to add in conclusion of this portion of 
my subject, I do not mean to speak of Pro- 
testants in general, and least of all of modern 
Protestants, most of whom are Protestants only 
in name, and have never fully examined the 
genuine Protestant system as it came from the 
hands of the early Reformers. Whoever 
examines Protestantism in its origin, primitive 
direction, and logical developement, must come 
to the conclusion that it is only fit to console a 

* Colloq. 1556, p. 104, and p.l35 Abendmahlslelire. Zwey- 
bruken, p, 404. 



84 THE CHARACTER 

# 
wicked heart : I believe, therefore I may sin as 

much as I please ; sin can do me no harm, for 
with all the crimes in the world on my con- 
science, if I have faith, I am sure of heaven. 
This is the secret starting point of the Reform- 
ation, its real origin, and root ; it gave birth to 
all the doctrines peculiar to Protestantism, and 
contains an obvious explanation of all it has 
rejected. The primitive Protestant principle 
once admitted, that a man may do all that 
he pleases, and still be saved, provided he 
believes, there is no longer any use for Con- 
fession, Indulgences, Extreme Unction, the 
Invocation of Saints, nor for any of the peculiar 
doctrines of the Catholic Church; the laws of 
God themselves are practically abolished. 

The primitive Protestant principle, as it leads 
on the one hand to a wicked presumption of 
the mercy of God, and an unfounded hope of 
heaven, as its only consolation ; so, on the 
other hand, it generates despair. Extremes 
meet. I have asserted, not only that Protest- 
antism is a Religion of Distress, but that it is a 
Religion of Despair ; this may be partly con- 
cluded from the preceding pages, and I now 
proceed to prove it more fully. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 85 



SECTION 11. 



PROTESTANTISM A RELiaiON OF 
DESPAIR. 

Protestantism leads to despair, because it 
denies free-will. This alone proves the asser- 
tion. 

For a large number of Protestants, despair 
is the consequence likewise of the fundamental 
Protestant doctrine, that the Bible is the only 
Rule of Faith, and that every one must make 
out his own faith from the Bible, for no one 
can come to any certainty in regard to faith 
either b}*^ Private Interpretation or by Private 
Inspiration ; and for those who cannot read, or 
cannot succeed in imagining that they have 
any Private Inspiration, nothing evidently is 
possible but despair. 

Luther himself confessed that he was tempted 
to despair. On one occasion. Dr. Jonas, in a 
conversation with him, quoted the text of St. 



86 THE CHARACTER 

Paul, " For the rest, there is laid np for me a 
crown of justice," and exclaimed, " How beau- 
tifully the Apostle speaks !" " Yes," replied 
Luther, " but I do not think he believed as firmly 
as his words seem to indicate. People imagine 
that I believe as firmly, as I express myself 
strongly in my sermons; but that is not the 
case."* Indeed, Luther, not only confessed 
that he was tempted to despair, and that he 
was frequently so tempted, but he thought 
that St. Paul was tempted to despair as well 
as be, and in this sense he explained the words 
of the Apostle, " I die daily." 

Protestantism has also advanced the doctrine 
of Predestination. Calvin taught explicitly 
that God, from all eternity, has predestined a 
portion of the human race to salvation, and the 
rest to eternal ruin. He says, " We call Pre- 
" destination the eternal decree of God, by 
" which He has ordained of His own free-will 
" what He will do with every man, for all men 
" are not created in the same manner, but 
" some are appointed for eternal salvation, 
'' others for eternal damnation. Hence accord- 
" ing as a man is created, we say that he is 
" predestined either to eternal life, or to eternal 
" damnation."! Calvin goes so far in this 

* Luther. Colloq. p. 133. 

t Calv. Instit. 1. III. c. 21. n. 9. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 87 

blasphemous doctrine, as to say, that " God 
" permits those who are predestined to eternal 
" damnation to do some good in this life, but 
" that He permits it only in order to make them 
" the more guilty and punish them the more 
" severely in eternity."* Not only Calvinists, 
but all true Protestants, even such as do not 
hold Calvin's horrible axioms explicitly, are in 
consistency bound to admit the doctrine of 
absolute Predestination. This follows from the 
doctrine of Luther and his followers, admitted 
by all genuine Protestants, that the fall has 
completely ruined our nature, and, hence, 
destroyed our free-will. Salvation or damna- 
tion, therefore, cannot in any degree depend on 
free-will, for free-will does not exi^t ; hence, 
it must depend absolutely on Divine Predes- 
tination, the more so, as, according to genuine 
Protestant doctrine, there is no such thing as 
co-operation with grace or with justification. 
The same consequence follows from the Pro- 
testant doctrine of saving faith, for, as taught 
by Protestantism, this saving faith no one can 
give to himself, or co-operate in obtaining. 

Melanchthon agrees with Calvin, and says 
without hesitation, " Every thing that happens, 

* Instit. 1. III. c. 2. n. 11. 



88 THE CHARACTER 

happens necessarily by Divine Predestination, 
therefore our will has no freedom."* 

In opposition to this general Protestant 
doctrine, the Council of Trent has framed the 
following canon : " If any one shall say, that 
the grace of justification is given to those only 
who are predestined to life eternal ; but that 
all the others who are called, are called indeed, 
but receive no grace, because by Divine power 
predestined to evil ; let him be anathema."! 

After this, my candid American friends, judge 
whether I have exaggerated my charges 
against Protestantism, considered, chiefly, in 
its origin and primitive direction. I hope I 
have torn away from the face of Protestantism 
the mask of a Divine Religion. It is not my 
fault if Protestantism now appears to you like 
a spectre, risen from its grave of three cen- 
turies of corruption, staring you in the face 
with the empty look of desolation, and welcom- 
ing you with the ghastly smile of despair. 

ULTERIOR CONSEQUENCES. 

But there is worse than despair in its un- 
earthly aspect. Taking Protestantism in its 

* Melanchth. Loc. Theol. edit, Augsb. 1S21. 
t Cone. Trid. Sess. vi. can. xvli. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 89 

origin and primitive direction, I have to brand 
it with a stiJl darker stigma. On a more 
thorough investigation, you will discover in it 
abominations such as were shown to Ezechiel 
in the vision of the wall of Jerusalem. As 
wdth the prophet, who at first did not see any 
thing offensive, but, after digging into the wall, 
beheld the abominations of the city ; so it is 
with many Protestants, particularly with such 
as believe in Christ as the Redeemer of the 
world, and the Founder of a Divine Church. 
They only see in Protestantism a peculiar 
developement of Christianity, with nothing that 
strikes them as ofiensive. To hold that every 
man must make out his religion from his own 
Bible, does not seem to them to have in it any 
thing very alarming. But this is not the w^hole 
of Protestantism, nor Protestantism as such, 
that is. Protestantism considered in its origin, 
tendencies, and logical developements. It is 
only upon a closer examination than ordinary, 
that Protestants come to discover its real 
nature and entire meaning, and are forced to 
admit that it is odious in itself and abominable 
in its consequences. I will show you that Pro- 
testantism in its origin and logical tendencies, 
is a Religion of immorality, of insubordination 
and despotism, of irreligion and blasphemy. 



90 THE CHARACTER 

You may feel indignant at these charges, 
and they must appear to you to be most atro- 
cious calumnies ; but before throwing away the 
book, glance at my proofs, and refute them if 
you can : this much I have a right to expect 
from your candor and independence of char- 
acter. 

I call Protestantism, in its origin and logical 
tendencies, a Religion of immorality. Here is 
my proof. Luther and his associates taught 
that Christ had abrogated the whole moral 
law ; that the moral law was only to be 
regarded as a rule of policy for holding society 
together, but that, as a matter of conscience, 
the true believer need not trouble himself about 
it. Read Luther's " Commentaries on the 
Epistle to the Galatians," and you will find this 
very doctrine word for word. Among other 
things he has the following : " Therefore we 
say that the Ten Commandments have no 
right to accuse or frighten a conscience in 
which Christ reigns by His grace, as Jesus has 
annulled such a right in the Law." And 
again, " In general, Christ did not come to 
instruct mankind as a Teacher. This He has 
only done by chance. His office was only 
that of covering the sins of men." 

This is what Luther and the other Reformers 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 91 

understood, or pretended to understand, by 
the freedom of the Gospel. They all taught 
that the moral law can give no uneasiness to 
the conscience of the believer, because he has 
faith in Jesus, who by His merits has covered 
every transgression of the Law. Hence they 
sa}^, " The Holy Ghost is principally called the 
Paraclete or Comforter, because He comforts 
the disquieted consciences of believers, by 
enlivening their faith, which renders every 
wound of conscience harmless."* 

Luther calls Catholic Theologians fools, who 
do not know what they say, when they main- 
tain that Christ has abrogated the ceremonies 
only of the Old Law, not the Commandments. 
In his " Commentary on the Epistle to the 
Galatians," he compares the sensual man to 
Abraham's mule left behind in the valley, 
while Abraham ascended Mount Moria with 
Isaac. He says, " The mule at the foot of the 
mountain could do what it pleased. So the 
minds of believers may without uneasiness sun 
themselves on the mountain, without troubling 
themselves wdth what the mule of the flesh 
may do." 

The Ten Commandments are only an ex- 

* Solid. Declar. V. De Lege et Evang. 



'92 THE CHARACTER 

planation of the natural law : abrogate them, 
and there is an end of all morality, and we 
need no longer talk of virtue. As is amply 
proved by the complaints of the early Reformers, 
the new gospel morality soon bore its fruit in 
the frightful licentiousness that spread far and 
wide even in their own lifetime. 

Protestantism, in its origin, was so deeply 
infected with this kind of gospel freedom, that 
the contagion crossed the ocean and covered 
all England. The Methodist Conference, 
under Wesley, in 1770, declared publicl}', that 
the reason of the fearful, universal immorality 
then prevailing, was the wide- spread opinion 
that " Christ had annulled the Moral Law, and 
that evangelical freedom dispensed with the 
Ten Commandments." 

Many of the adherents of the Reformers, no 
doubt, spurned this wicked doctrine ; and there 
is not, perhaps, a man among you who does 
not repudiate it with scorn and disgust. Still, 
as Protestants, you are the followers of the first 
Reformers, and honor them as your leaders. 
The birth-place of those men, who receive so 
much of your praises, is still infected with the 
breath of their noisome teachings. How^ long 
will you endure a Religion of whose funda- 
mental doctrines such teachings are the legiti- 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 93 

mate deductions ? I say legitimate, for if man 
has no free-will, as Protestantism has main- 
tained, he cannot be bound by any law, any 
more than the brute. Were you to discover that 
a single accredited Catholic theologian has ever 
taught that the Ten Commandments are not 
binding on the consciences of Catholics, I verily 
believe you would instantl}^ drive us all out of 
the country. Why do you not turn against 
Protestantism, the same indignation that would 
be raised against us ? Can that be right in the 
case of Protestants, which in the case of 
Catholics would be an atrocious crime ? 

I have called Protestantism, in its origin and 
logical tendency, a Religion of disorder and 
despotism. If the Divine law has no binding 
force, it is evident that human laws can have 
none. Whoever has a right to say, I am my 
own authority in faith, my own judge in Reli- 
gion, my own master in Divine things, must 
be allowed to say, and have the courage to 
proclaim with no less boldness, I am my own 
Sovereign and my own law-giver, and will not 
be bound by the laws of the State. There is no 
need of being a Louis XIV. ; it is enough to be 
a consistent reasoner, after you have once said, 
/ am the Churchy to take the next step and say, 
" V etat c'est moi — / am the State.^^ When 



94 THE CHARACTER 

once this step is taken, confusion, tumult, 
violence, bloodshed, anarchy, must ensue ; or 
if they do not, it is because men are inconsist- 
ent, and afraid to carry out their opinions, to 
their full length, in practice. Indeed, you are, 
in general, much better men, than logicians. 
When Germany was deluged with blood by 
the rising of the peasants, Erasmus was right 
in writing to Luther, " We now reap the fruits 
of your spirit. You do not acknowledge the 
leaders, hut they acknowledge you. You have, it 
is true, disowned their proceedings in your 
frantic little book, but you do not prove that 
you have given no occasion to the calamit}' by 
the books which you have written against 
monks and bishops, and concerning evangelical 
freedom." 

Protestantism, in its origin, likewise estab- 
lished the principle, and furnished the justifica- 
tion of despotism. Luther says in his '' Com- 
mentary on the Epistle to the Galatians," 
" Human laws have nothing to do with con- 
science." And writing about the Rebellion of 
the Peasants, he says, " Let cannons roar 
around the heads of the peasants ; these are 
the only reasons to be given to those fellows. 
It matters not if some innocent man perish in 
the conflict." This is a pretty despotic counsel. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 96 

All know how faithfully it was followed 
by Henry VIII. and Elizabeth. " My Lords, 
either your consent, or your heads," said 
Henry VIII., to his stubborn Parliament, and 
then rubbed his hands together with quiet 
self-complacency. The original Protestant 
principles make the Sovereign a despot over 
the Church as well as in the State. You are 
acquainted, I hope, with the famous old Pro- 
testant axiom, " Cujus est regio, illius est religio 
— He that rules the country is master of its reli- 
gion.'''' Even in our own days, a woman rules 
the Church of England as its supreme head. 
Some of your prejudiced historical writers con- 
tinue to repeat the exploded fable of a Johanna 
Papissa — Pope Joan : in England, we have a 
real female pope in the person of Queen 
Victoria. 

Lastly, I have called Protestantism, in its 
origin and logical tendency, a Religion of irre- 
ligion and blasphemy. I prove it. W^here no 
free-will exists, there can exist no religious 
duties, and a Religion v^ithout religious duties 
is no Religion at all. A Religion that denies 
free-will and abrogates the Commandments, 
contradicts the very idea of Religion, as is 
evident from the derivation and meaning of the 
word. Religion comes from religare, to bind 



96 THE CHARACTER 

anew, and points to dogmas and duties, bind- 
ing on the intelligence and conscience, and 
uniting us to God. The denial of free-will and 
of the obligation of the moral law, destroys the 
bond, and therefore annihilates the primary, 
fundamental, essential idea of Religion. 

Protestantism, as it came from the hands of 
the first Reformers, deserves, also, to be 
branded as a Religion of blasphemy, for they 
made God the author of sin, and thereby evi- 
dently destroyed, on the one hand, the idea of 
sin, and, on the other, the idea of the infinite 
Sanctity of God. Here is the proof of my 
accusation. 

Besides Luther's writings against Erasmus, 
to which I would refer you, I may quote 
Melanchthon, Luther's intimate disciple. In 
the following, Melanchthon faithfully expresses 
his master's opinions : " It is certain that all 
that happens, whether good or evil, comes from 
God. We assert, that God not only permits 
his creatures to act, but that He himself does 
every thing, so that as the vocation of Paul 
was the work of God, so was the adultery of 
David ; and as the vocation of Paul was the 
work of God, so also w^as the treachery of 
Judas."* 

* Martin. Chemnitz, Loc. Theol. p. 1, p. 173. Leyser, 1G15. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 97 

Many others among Luther's adherents 
advocated the same opinion. Hence the 
Church in the Council of Trent framed the 
following canon against the Reformers : " If 
any one shall say, that it is not in the power 
of man to render his ways evil ; but that God 
does the evil works, as He does the good, not 
only permissively, but properly and through 
Himself; so that the treason of Judas is God's 
own work, no less than the vocation of Paul ; 
let him be anathema."* 

Calvin, Zwingli, Beza, the three chief Swiss 
Reformers, are just as blasphemous in their 
doctrine as Melanchthon and Luther. Calvin 
makes use of such expressions as the following, 
not once only, but in a countless number o 
passages : " God impels man to do evil. He 
orders his fall, and for this purpose makes use 
of an interior inspiration in the heart of man."f 
Beza, the head of the Calvinists after Calvin's 
death, goes farther, and adds, " God creates a 
portion of men, only that He may use them as 
instruments to do evil."]; By way of proving 
that this is not contrary to the justice and 
sanctity of God, Zwingli resorts to reasoning 

* Cone. Trid, Sess. vi. can. vi. 

"t Calv. Instit. 1. iv. c. xviii. ^2 1. iii. c. xxiii. § 8. 

t Beza, Aphorism, xxii. 

w 



98 THE CHAEACTER 

that would be laughable, were it not so shock- 
ing. He says, '• God is above the law, there- 
fore he cannot transgress the law, and conse- 
quently there is for Him no moral evil. He 
may do what He pleases. But the creature 
that commits evil by his impulse, sins, because 
God has given it a law." This Zwingli 
illustrates by a comparison worthy of the 
blasphemy. " A bull," he says, " may fill 
a whole herd of cattle with calves ; this would 
only increase his merit, for he has no law. 
But, on the contrary, if his master should have 
more than one wife, he would be an adulterer, 
because a law has been given him, but the bull 
has none."* God and a bull ! What a com- 
parison ! And still Zwingli goes on to explain 
by it that, though David's adultery was God's 
work, yet it was no sin in God who compelled 
him to commit it, but was a sin in David alone. 
I leave it to you to decide whether I have a 
right to call Protestantism a Religion of blas- 
phemy. 

You may say, What have we to do with 
Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, Beza, or Zwingli ? 
We do not agree with them. I grant it, but 
can you deny that you honor, as the authors of 

* Zwingl. De Provid. cv. et vi. 



OF mOTESTANTISM. 99 

the Reformation, the very authors of all this 
blasphemy ? Is not the presumption against 
a Religion founded by such men? Must not 
such a Religion, at first sight, appear exceed- 
ingly suspicious, chiefly when you reflect on 
the commentary which the lives of the Re- 
formers furnish to their teaching ? Can you 
deny that they were passionate, and that 
Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and their first follow- 
ers publicly called each other wicked, mutineers, 
interpolators, reprobates, devils, and arch- 
devils ? Have you ever read any such thing 
of the Apostles and of the Fathers of the 
Catholic Church ? Have you ever read that 
they loaded each other with insults, like those 
which Luther hurled against Henry VIIL, and 
Henry VIII. in turn against Luther ? 

Such are the men from whom you have 
received your Religion. Their first unfortunate 
adherents would have done well to have asked 
them some higher proof of their mission than 
insult. At a later time, when some Protestant 
ministers came among the converts of St. 
Francis Xavier in India, after the death of that 
great Apostle, and exhorted them to become 
Protestants, those newly converted savages 
made this very striking and just reply, '' As for 
your doctrines, we will not take the trouble to 



100 THE CHARACTER 

examine whether you are right or wrong ; we 
are not learned enough for that ; but we will 
propose an easy test that will at once clear up 
the whole matter. When the great Father 
[thus they called Xavier] came among us, he 
raised three dead men to life. If you wish us 
to change our faith for yours, you must first 
raise six dead men to life, that we may have 
more reason to believe you than him." 

Your English forefathers would have done 
well to require a similar proof from the 
preachers of the new doctrines. They should 
have demanded from them, not only to raise 
six dead men to life, but to work twice as many 
miracles as had ever been wrought by all the 
Apostles and Saints of England, and by all the 
Apostolic men and Saints of the Catholic 
Church in the whole world, particularly as 
there was question of changing a Religion of 
consolation for a Religion of distress and 
despair, and the more so as this Religion was 
forced on them by the blood-stained hand of 
power. 

Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, with their 
favorites and creatures, violently tore England 
from the Catholic Church. I have never read 
of their resuscitating the dead, but I have 
read of their murdering in cold blood hundreds 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 101 

of Priests and zealous Catholics, to introduce 
Protestantism into the country. These are 
historical facts. Your own writers have re- 
corded them. Read the portrait of Henry and 
Elizabeth drawn by the famous Protestant 
Cobbett, in his " History of the Protestant 
Reformation in England and Ireland." He says 
of those two founders of the English Reforma- 
tion, " Historians have been divided in opinion, 
as to which was the worst man that England 
ever produced, her father, [Henry VIII.] or 
Cranmer ; but all mankind must agree, that 
this [Elizabeth] was the worst woman that ever 
existed in England, or in the whole world, 
Jezabel herself not excepted."* 

Protestantism in its origin was by no means 
popular in England. It was introduced by 
tyrants, and forced on the nation by violence 
and bloodshed. It originated in the lust of 
Henry VIII. Indeed, Protestantism everywhere 
sprang from the two crimes which you most 
abhor, lust and despotism. It was originated 
in German}^ by a lustful apostate monk ; it was 
introduced in England by a lustful despotic 
monarch, who, after having written against 
Luther's Protestantism, ended by adopting it 

* Cobbett, A History of the Prot. Reform., Sec, Letter xi., 
No. 348. See also Doellinger's celebrated History of the 
Reformation. See Bishop Spalding's History of tUo Reforma- 
tion. 



102 THE CHARACTER 

himself in order to satisfy his own adulterous 
desires, and because he wished to be his own 
pope, as the Pope of Rome refused to sanction 
his crime. The despotic work begun by 
Henry, was completed by a lustful, tyrannical 
Queen, his daughter. There is nothing better 
authenticated in all history than these startling 
facts, that Protestantism came from licentious 
apostate priests and monks, and from despotic, 
licentious sovereigns, not from the people. 
The origin alone of Protestantism renders it in 
the highest degree suspicious. 

Protestantism is so far from having originated 
with the people or being the palladium of their 
liberties, that it was grasped at by monarchs 
as an instrument of despotism. The aim of 
the first Protestant rulers was to unite in their 
own hands both the temporal and spiritual 
powers, to enslave the souls as well as the 
bodies of the people, and be checked by no 
one. Wherever Protestantism failed to intro- 
duce despotism, it was owing in a great 
measure to the people, who turned against 
their sovereigns, and in some instances, by a 
just retribution, hurled them from their throne. 

You are, then, Protestants to-day because 
English tyrants forced Protestantism on your 
ancestors. You have thrown off the political 
yoke of England, but you have not got rid of 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 103 

her religious influence. In a great measure, 
you remain Protestants because England re- 
mains Protestant. England's conversion to 
Catholic truth, could hardly fail to be followed 
by the conversion of the United States. You 
owe it to your love of truth and independence 
to determine your own course, and not to 
remain in Protestantism from mere education 
and habit. 



CHAPTER 11. 



THE PRIJVrCIPLE OF PROTEST- 
ANTISM. 



I REMARKED above that one of the reasons 
why many among you remain Protestant, is 
the lack on their part of earnest examination. 
You neglect especially to investigate the prin- 
ciple of Protestantism, or the Protestant Rule 
of Faith. 

The Catholic Rule of Faith is the infallible 
authority of the Church in matters of faith ; the 
Protestant Rule is the Private Interpretation of 
the Bible. The Catholic believes whatever the 
Church teaches, because Christ has given her 
authority to teach in His name, and to teach 

104 



THE PRINCIPLE OF PROTESTANTISM. lOf) 

infallibly what He has revealed. The Protest- 
ant professes to believe only what he can dis- 
cover in the Bible by his own Private interpre- 
tation. 

If you read the following pages with candor, 
without allowing yourselves to be swayed by 
prejudice, and with the determination to follow 
your convictions in the face of all obstacles 
whether from your family, your friends, or your 
worldly interests, it will be impossible for you 
to remain Protestants ; you will be fully con- 
vinced that the Catholic Church is the only 
true Church of Christ, and consequently that 
her infallible teaching is the true Rule of Faith ; 
that Protestantism, on the contrary, is not the 
true Church of Christ, and that its principle of 
Private Interpretation is absurd, and conse- 
quently that you cannot save your soul in 
Protestantism. The event shall prove whether 
you have the courage to examine for an hour 
with earnestness and candor. 



11 



106 THE PRINCIPLE 



SECTION I. 



THE DIVINE TRUTH OF THE CATHOLIC 
CHURCH.— HER INFALLIBLE TEACH- 
ING.— THE TRUE RULE OF FAITH. 



The whole controvers}'- turns on this single 
question : What is the real motive alleged by 
the Reformers for separating from the Mother 
Church ? It is reproached that the Catholic 
Church fell into error in the fifth or sixth cen- 
tury, lost her primitive form by innovations 
and abuses, and ceased to be the true Church 
of Christ. With this assertion Protestantism 
must stand or fall. The question is not whe- 
ther Tetzel and Leo X. were good or wicked 
Catholics, the question is about the Church alone. 
Has the Catholic Churchy which was unquestionably 
the fir si Churchythe one instituted by Christ ^changed 



OF PROTESTANTISM 107 

w has she not ? This is the whole question. 
Has she changed, no matter at what time, and 
could she change ? The authors of Protestant- 
ism attempted to reform the Church as such, 
the Church as a Church, or else they could have 
no right to separate from her. The Church as 
a Church, according to them, had ceased to be 
the true Church. 

To this fundamental supposition, which is 
the essential support of Protestantism, I oppose 
the following assertion : As long as reason 
remains reason, and Christ remains Christ, 
there can never, by any possibility, arise a 
deterioration in a Church Divinely instituted, 
and consequently there can never arise any 
occasion for a Reformation, nor any lawful 
reason for seceding from her. 

I say, while reason remains reason there can 
never be even a possibility of deterioration in 
a Divinely constituted Church, and the bare 
thought of reforming such a Church is the 
greatest absurdity that can enter the human 
mind. This is clear from the following evident 
principle of reason : Whatever God has ordained 
for an end must exist as long as the end exists, and 
no man, angel, or demon can change it. 

Here is an obvious illustration. God has 
created natural laws and powers in the visible 



108 THE PRINCIPLE 

world with a view to its existence, and no man, 
no angel, no demon can change them. Man 
may use or abuse the powers of nature, but 
change or reform them he cannot. What 
would you think of Luther and the rest of the 
Reformers, had they attempted to reform the 
sun, moon, and stars, and nature in general? 
To think of reforming the system of the world 
is madness : to think of reforming a Divinely 
instituted Church is absurdity and folly greater 
in an infinite degree. 

The Church is a spiritual world, a universe 
formed by the power, and mercy, and grace of 
God. This creation is of an infinitely higher 
order than the material universe ; it is more 
firmly fixed, more unchangeable, because it is 
founded for eternity. " Heaven and earth," 
says Christ, " shall pass away, but my words 
shall not pass away."* And again, " I say to 
thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I 
will build my Church ; and the gates of hell 
shall not prevail against it."f I do not inquire 
here what is meant by the rock, nor who is to 
be understood by Peter, but merely wish to 
direct your attention to the solemn, positive 

* Matt., xxiv. 35. 
t Ibid. xvi. 18. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 109 

assurance of Christ, that "the gates of hell 
shall not prevail against it." 

This brings me to the second part of my 
assertion, that while Christ is Christ, that is, 
the Incarnate Son of God, His Church cannot 
change, because she is Divine, and has His 
promise to continue unchanged throughout all 
time. If you read the Scripture, you must 
know that all the promises of God, made by 
the prophets for a long series of centuries, had 
foretold that the Kingdom of Christ, His 
Church, would be eternal and unchangeable. 
The angel who announced the Incarnation 
likewise referred to this characteristic of the 
Church : " He shall reign in the house of Jacob 
forever, and of His kingdom there shall be no 
end."* But I will here confine myself to the 
promise of Christ above quoted. That promise 
is too clear and direct to be misunderstood, 
" The gates of hell shall not prevail against it." 
"When Christ affirms so solemnly that the 
Church will not change, how can a Christian 
presume to say. The Church has changed ? If 
the Church has changed, Christ is Christ no 
longer : He has not spoken the truth, and can- 
not be the Son of God. Then He has estab- 

* Luke, i. 32, 33. 



110 THE PRINCIPLE 

lished no Divine Church ; men need not care 
whether they are Christians or Pagans ; there 
is no essential difference between Protestants 
and Catholics, for both sides are deceived. 

I wish every one of j^ou would reflect on this 
argument as earnestly and with the same 
result, as an Englishman did, some years ago, 
in the Church of St. Peter's at Rome. He was 
a thorough and an obstinate Protestant. Like 
many of his countrymen, he had gone to Rome 
from curiosity. It was the Feast of the great 
Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul. The Pope, 
Pius VII., was to sing High Mass at St. Peter's. 
While the Pope, according to custom, was 
being carried through the Church, the choir 
sang the antiphon, " Tu es Petrus, — Thou art 
Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, 
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against 
it." When the Englishman heard the words, 
" Et portcB inferi non prcevalebunt — The gates of 
hell shall not prevail," he muttered to him- 
self, " Prcevaluerunt — They have prevailed." 
The choir repeated the words with greater 
force, ^^ Non prcevalehunt ;^'' he repeated his 
^^ prcBvaluerunt — they have prevailed." But as 
if the power of the solemn chaunt had over- 
whelmed him, or as if he had suddenly heard 
the celestial choirs themselves, he paused ; a 



OF PROTESTANTISM. Ill 

sudden light had flashed upon him ; the grace 
of God had illumined him ; he had suddenly 
conceived the full significance of the promise 
of Christ the Son of God. For a while he was 
absorbed in reflection, and then striking the 
floor with his cane, he exclaimed aloud in a 
decided tone ^^Non praevalebunt — They shall not 
prevail." He left the Church a convert to the 
Catholic faith. 

A Febronian theologian employed by the 
famous Austrian Emperor Joseph 11. , was once 
so forcibly struck by those words of Christ, on 
hearing them read at Mass, that he was taken 
ill on the spot, so horrified was he at the 
thought of the crime he was committing in 
aiding the Emperor in his attacks on the rights 
of the Church. He understood that in spite of 
his impious efforts, the Church would continue 
as she was, and with her the Pope. 

If you had heard Christ Himself address the 
promise to St. Peter alone of all the Apostles 
around him, you would have been deeply im- 
pressed with a sense of its infallible certainty. 
The promise is the same now as ever. If 
Christ is Christ, His promise is Divine ; it will 
be true to the end of the world, and the Church 
along with it, and no man, angel, or demon 
can corrupt or change her. If all the calum- 



112 THE PRINCIPLE 

nies ever invented against Popes, Bishops, and 
Priests were true, you could not draw from 
them a shadow of conclusion against the 
Church. If every Pope, Bishop, and Priest had 
been a Judas, a Caiphas, a Pilate, a Herod, 
and an incarnate demon, all in one. not one of 
them, nor all of them together, could have viti- 
ated the Church, for Christ has instituted her 
not for them alone, but for all men and for the 
salvation of men in all ages. The Church is 
not the work of men, any more than the world ; 
therefore, they have as little power to corrupt 
one as to annihilate the other. They are free 
to use or to abuse the means of grace intrusted 
to the Church by her Founder, but they can no 
more alter the Church and its means of grace, 
than they can the course of the sun and moon. 
" Before you think of changing the Church," 
said St. Chrysostom in the fourth century, 
" change the sun, moon, and stars. Much 
sooner will you succeed in destroying the light 
of the sun, than in weakening the Church. 

Hence I say. The first Church is the true 
Church, or else there is no Divine Christian 
Church. Americans, do you feel the irresistible 
power of this logical inference ? Whoever does 
not pause to reflect upon it, cannot be in 
earnest to know the truth. In fact, either he 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 113 

does not believe Christ to be the Son of God 
and the Founder of a Divine Church, or he is 
incapable or unwilling to make a right use of 
his reason. Every one who believes Christ to 
be Christ, and consults his reason candidly, 
must hold this to be an evident principle. The 
Catholic Church, being the first Church, the 
Church instituted by Christ, is, and alone can 
be, the true Church of Christ. 

This principle, in the present discussion, is 
to reason what the sun is to the universe. If a 
man closes his eyes against the sun, and com- 
plains that every thing is dark, you will not 
have recourse to astronomy to convince him 
that the sun and stars exist. So in the all- 
important question. Is the Catholic Church 
the true Church of Christ, and had the Reformers 
a just right to secede from her ? I say the 
decision wholly depends on the question. Is the 
Catholic Church the only Christian Church 
reaching back to Christ ? If the question is 
answered in the affirmative, then the Catholic 
Church is the true Church of Christ, the Divine, 
unchangeable Church ; and it can never be law- 
ful to separate from her, for the promise of 
Christ cannot change. Everyone who will not 
hear the Church, that is, the Church instituted 
by Him, must " be held as the heathen and the 



114 THE PRINCIPLE 

publican."* Whatever she teaches as a 
Church must be true, or else she could change, 
which Christ has declared to be impossible : 
" The gates of hell shall not prevail against it." 
The irresistible force of this reasoning must 
be evident to every Protestant. If he does not 
become a Catholic, the reason must be sought 
in his heart, not in his mind. This is candidly 
acknowledged by a learned Protestant writer 
of our time, Gfroerer, in his " Critical Essay on 
Ancient Christianity." He thus expresses him- 
self: " Catholic faith, if you admit its first 
principle, (that Christ is the Son of God, and 
His Church Divine, which no true Protest- 
ant can deny,) is as conclusive as the books 
of Euclid. There is no article of Catholic faith, 
which cannot be justified upon that principle. "f 
Even Rousseau makes the following frank 
avowal : " Qu'on me prouve, qu'en matiere de 
foi je suis oblige de me soumettre aux decisions 
de quelqu'un, des demain je me fais Catholique, 
et tout homme consequent et vrai fera comme 
moi.J; — Let it be proved to me that, in matters 
of faith, 1 must submit to the decisions of any 



* Matt., xviii. 17. 

t Vol. I., Preface, pp. 15-17. 

t Rousseau, Lettre de la M ontagne II, 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 115 

one, and to-morrow I will become a Catholic, 
and every consistent and true man will do the 
same." 

Rousseau is right in saying every man. As 
for the proof which he asks, it depends on the 
simple historical question, Which is the most 
ancient, or rather, the first Church, instituted 
by Christ Himself, the Son of God ? I make 
the following supposition. 

A man dies in 1862, leaving an only son 
born in 1830, to whom he has bequeathed all 
his property, and whose name, birthplace, and 
age, are all accurately described in the will. 
Two others come forward, each claiming to be 
the only son and universalheir of the deceased. 
The matter is brought befpre the court. As it 
is clearly proved that the deceased had only 
one son, all the judge has to do is to find out 
the birthplace, age, and name of each of the 
claimants. On interrogating two of them, he 
finds that the age of one is fifteen, and of the 
other twenty, and the birthplace and name of 
both different from those mentioned in the will. 
The third claimant proves by authentic docu- 
ments, and by the testimony of the whole 
neighborhood, that his age, name, and birth- 
place perfectly agree with the description in 
the will. No other claimants appear. Indeed, 



116 THE PRINCIPLE 

the case is so clear that a child ten years old 
could decide it, and it is ridiculous to bring it 
before the court. The true son must be thirty- 
two years old, and every other claimant is an 
impostor. 

The application to the Church is obvious. 
Let us take a non- Christian, for example a 
Turk, as judge, and he will decide, without 
difficulty, which of the three great Christian 
families are the true Christians, the Catholic, 
the Protestant, or the Greek and Oriental 
schismatic. 

The Turk interrogates each of the three 
claimants : Do you sincerely believe that 
Christ was the true Son of God, and spoke the 
infallible truth? All answer. We sincerely 
believe so. Do you believe that Christ said. 
My Church shall never fail, or. The gates of hell 
shall not prevail against it? All answer. We 
believe so. Do you believe that the Apostles 
of Christ gave to His Church the name of 
Catholic ? We do. When did Christ make 
that promise, establish His Church, and send 
forth His Apostles to announce it ? Eighteen 
hundred years ago. 

Now tell me, Protestants, how long have you 
existed? Three hundred years. Then, if four 
hundred years ago, a man wanted to become a 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 117 

Protestant, where was he to apply? Protest- 
antism was not yet in existence. What were 
your forefathers for fifteen hundred years ? 
They were Catholics. 

Tell me, schismatic Greeks and Orientals, 
how long have you existed? Eight hundred 
years. What is your name ? Orthodox. 
What w^ere your forefathers for a thousand 
years ? Catholics. 

And you. Catholics, how long have you 
existed ? Eighteen hundred years. Where 
were you born ? At Jerusalem. Who first 
called you Catholics ? The Apostles. Who 
calls you so now ? The whole world has called 
us Catholics for eighteen hundred years. How 
do you prove your age and your name ? The 
history of the world, the testimony of all gener- 
ations and of all races of man for eighteen 
hundred years prove it, and particularly the 
uninterrupted line of the successors of St. 
Peter,— Pius IX., Gregory XVI., Pius VIII., 
Leo XII., Pius VII., Pius VI., Clement XIV., 
and so on, back to Popes Clement, Linus, and 
Peter. 

The Turk's decision cannot be doubtful. If 
Christ instituted only one Church, and that 
eighteen hundred years ago ; if no Christian 
congregation but the Catholic, can prove that it 



118 THE PRINCIPLE 

has existed eighteen hundred years, or borne 
the name of Catholic given to the Church by 
the Apostles ; if the Catholic alone has the 
true age, and bears the true name, then he 
must decide that the Catholics alone are ^the 
true Christians. 

The Jew, in the well-known anecdote, gave a 
similar answer. Being asked by a Protestant 
and a Catholic, which of the two in his opinion 
was a member of the true Church, he answered, 
If Christ is not the Messiah, then we Jews are 
the only members of the true Church ; if Christ 
is the Messiah, then the Catholics are ; but as 
for you Protestants, you can never be members 
of the true Church. You have come too late 
for that. 

When I was in Cincinnati, some years ago, 
a Methodist lady, w^hose daughter had lately 
become a Catholic, wished to see St. Philo- 
mena's church. The walls and ceiling of that 
church had been decorated with paintings. 
Standing before a large picture of the Blessed 
Virgin, she remarked to me, " We Methodists 
do not adore the Virgin Mary." " Neither do 
we," I replied, "but tell me, do you believe 
that the Virgin Mary was a Methodist ?" " No, 
indeed." "Well," I said, "for my part, I 
should be unwilling to belong to a Religion 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 119 

which was not professed by the Mother of 
Christ." 

Dr. Pusey and the Puseyites, in our time, 
have felt the truth of this axiom, The first 
Church is tJie true Church, or there is no Church. 
Hence they call themselves English Catholics. 
But it is as true now as in the age of St. 
Austin, that, " whether heretics like it or not, 
the whole world gives the name of Catholic to 
the Roman Catholic Church alone, and to no 
sect, even if the sects had a mind to claim the 
title." 

This I have experienced in America. In 
1852, at Manytowak, Wisconsin, I noticed a 
large and elegant church with a beautiful cross 
on its steeple, and remarked to an American 
lawyer, " I am astonished to find here so large 
a Catholic Church. Are there so many Catho- 
lics in this place ?" " No, sir," he replied, 
" you are mistaken ; it is a Puseyite church. 
The Puseyites call themselves Catholics. 
Some time ago the pastor of that church was 
at my house, and remarked to me. We, too, 
are Catholics, not Roman Catholics however, 
but English Catholics. I told him they were 
not the right sort of Catholics, but counterfeit?'* 
The lawyer's remark was certainly apposite. 

Last year, in Philadelphia, on seeing a 



120 THE PRINCIPLE 

Church with a beautiful cross, and asking 
whether it was a Catholic church, I was told it 
was not, but that the congregation called them- 
selves Apostolic Catholics. " How Apostolic 
Catholics?" I asked. "If they can prove their 
right to the name, I will be one of their num- 
ber this very day. But they cannot prove it. 
History shows too clearly that the Roman 
Catholic Church alone has descended from the 
Apostles, and in her alone is found the suc- 
cessor of St. Peter, in the person of the Pope 
and therefore she alone is the true Catholic 
Church. Hence she is the only true Church of 
Christ, and can be easily distinguished from all 
other churches, by simply applying the test of 
St. Ambrose, "Where Peter is, there is the 
Church." 

Show me that St. Peter and his first suc- 
cessors were Protestants ; prove that the 
earliest Catholics of England had Protestant 
parents ; that England was Protestant for 
fifteen hundred years, and that the first Catho- 
lic in England was an apostate from Prtoest- 
antism, and I will at once become a Protestant. 
Can you prove that ? You cannot, were you 
to argue for all eternity. But if, on the other 
hand, it is clear as day that England was 
Catholic for fifteen hundred years ; that the 



OP PROTESTANTISM. 121 

first Protestant on earth was an apostate 
Catholic priest and monk, who had said Mass 
and heard Confessions for many years ; if 
it is true that his most powerful follower in 
England was an apostate Catholic King, and 
that all the original Protestants in England 
had Catholic parents, then I say, that living 
and dying I will remain a Catholic. 

I am convinced that, if you believe in Jesus 
Christ and His promises, you must feel the 
invincible force of this argument, that the 
Catholic Church is the true Church, because 
she is the first Church ; and that Protestantism 
is a counterfeit of Christianity, because it has 
not been instituted by Christ, nor has it 
descended from His Apostles : it is, and alwaj^s 
will and must be, a mere deviation from the 
truth, an innovation introduced by a sensual, 
apostate monk, and a despotic, adulterous 
King. 

A Catholic, living among Protestants, was 
once asked, whether he was not afraid of being 
buried in the Protestant graveyard. He re- 
plied, " No, gentlemen. Only dig a little 
deeper, and you will find nothing but Catholic 
bones." Americans, go to England, dig in the 
gravej^ards around the churches of your mother 
country, and under the dust of recent Protest- 
12 



122 THE PRINCIPLE 

ant generations you will only find the ashes of 
your Catholic forefathers. Standing by those 
graves in the deep earnestness of thought with 
which death and eternity inspire every man 
who cares for his immortal hopes, reflect again 
and again upon the irresistible force of this 
proposition, The Catholic Church, being the 
first Church, is the true Church, or else there 
is no Divine Christian Church. 

If you do not wish to be Catholics, you must 
become infidels, in order to retain a shadow of 
consistency — for the consistency of infidels, as 
I shall prove below, is nothing more than a 
shadow. But if you are determined to be 
Christians, and to believe as heretofore that 
Christ is Christ, and still persist in denying the 
truth of the Catholic Church, you do not, you 
cannot, retain even the shadow of consistency. 
Protestantism, in the light of revelation, his- 
tory, and sound reason, in the very first step of 
our examination, appears most glaringly and 
utterly inconsistent. 

OTHEK MARKS OF THE DIVINITY OF 
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 

Besides the unanswerable proof that the Catho- 
lic Church is the true Church, because she is 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 123 

the first Church, or the Apostolic Church, there 
are other proofs, no less evident, of her truth. 
The Church of Christ had been foretold under 
the image of " a mountain on the top of moun- 
tains, to which all nations should flow."* 
Christ compares her to a city built upon a 
mountain. The true Church of Christ must be 
visible. Instituted for the salvation of men 
in all time, she must have visible marks, 
by which she can be distinguished, in all ages 
and countries, from every sect and schism. 

I will show that, besides the mark of aposto- 
licity, of which I have just spoken, the Church 
of Christ must necessarily possess the charac- 
teristics of unity, sanctity, universality, and 
indestructibility ; that these characteristics 
belong to the Catholic Church, and are com- 
pletely wanting in Protestantism. Their 
presence in the Catholic Church casts upon 
her the vivid light of truth, and clearly shows 
her to be the true City of God ; their absence 
in Protestantism leaves upon it the palpable 
darkness of error and exhibits it as an edifice 
of falsehood, a pure deformation of the truth. 

* Isa., ii. 2, 



124 THE PRINCIPLE 



UNITY. 

The true Church of Christ must be one in 
her founder, for her founder must be Christ. 
She must likewise be one in faith, one in her 
means of salvation, one in government, and her 
unity must be visible. All this is evident from 
the Gospels and Epistles, and the Acts of the 
Apostles. 

In regard to the unity of faith, it is evident 
that when Christ sent His Apostles " to teach 
all nations," He did not send them to teach 
contradictory doctrines. He commands all 
men to believe the faith preached by the 
Apostles, for he says, " He that believeth not 
shall be condemned."* He requires the same 
unity in the duties to be fulfilled by Christians, 
for He says, " Go ye, and teach all nations . . 
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever 
I have commanded you."f The promise of 
salvation is attached to the faith, hope, and 
charity which He has taught mankind, and to 
no other ; He prayed to His heavenly Father, 



* Mark, xvi. 16. 

t Matt., xxviii. 19, 20. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 125 

" that thej^ might all be one, as the Father is 
one in Him, and He in the Father."* 

Unity of government is a no less necessary 
and undeniable characteristic of the true 
Church of Christ, as is evident both from the 
manner in which He sent His Apostles and 
from the power which he gave them : " As 
the Father hath sent me, I also send you."t 
" If he will not hear the Church, let him be to 
thee as the heathen and the publican."]; Christ 
has made the characteristic of unity still more 
evident by the institution of a visible Head in 
the person of St. Peter, to whom He said in 
presence of all His Apostles, " I will give to 
thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven,"§ 
and later, in presence of several of His disci- 
ples, " Feed my lambs. Feed my sheep."|| 

The Apostles, the inspired interpreters of 
the will of Christ, insist on the characteristic 
of unity as of absolute necessity to the Church 
of Christ. " One Lord, one Faith,"*(f says St. 
Paul, and he returns to the same point in his 



* John, xvii. 21. 
f John, XX. 21. 
X Matt., xviii. 17. 
I Matt., xvi. 19. 
H John, XX. 16, 17 
^ Ephes.,iv. 5. 



126 THE PRINCIPLE 

Epistles to the Philippians,* Galatians,f Ro- 
mans,]; and Corinthians.§ St. Paul likewise 
dwells on the necessity of unity in the means 
of salvation : " The chalice of benediction 
which we bless, is it not the communion of the 
blood of Christ? And the bread which we 
break, is it not the partaking of the body of the 
Lord ? For we being many, are one bread, one 
body, all who partake of one bread."|| In 
regard to unity of government, you well know 
that St. Paul frequently refers to it, particularly 
in his Epistles to Timothy and Titus . The Acts 
of the Apostles, in describing the first council 
of Jerusalem, bear clear testimony that the 
head of the Church was Peter. 

Wherever Christ speaks of the Church, He 
speaks of her as one Church. Indeed, since 
He is God, He cannot have founded conflicting 
Churches. All the figures under which Christ 
and His Apostles represent the Church, com- 
bine to demonstrate her absolute unity: a 
building, an inheritance, a flock, a kingdom, a 
city, an army, a body, and other figures made 
use of in reference to the Church, both in 

* Pliilipp., ii. 2. 
t Galat., i. 6-9. 
J Eom., xvi. 17. 
§ 1 Cor., i. 10. 
11 1 Cor., X. 16, 17. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 127 

the Gospels and the Epistles, are all striking 
emblems of unity. 

The absolute unity of the Church of Christ, 
as is evident from history, was universally 
acknowledged and invariably vindicated from 
the beginning, and throughout all the early 
ages of her existence, as well as in our own 
time. Every sect and schism that ever rose 
was uniformly cut off from her communion, 
because held to be incompatible with her 
unity. - 

The true Church of Christ must be one ; 
contradictory doctrines cannot be all true ; they 
cannot have been taught by Christ, nor belong 
to the Church which He founded. 

It is scarcely necessary to prove that the 
unity of the Church must be a visible unity, for 
the Church is necessarily made up of visible 
men ; those who are " to teach all nations to 
the end of time " must be visible ; the bonds of 
communion established by Christ, the Sacra- 
ments, the Primacy of Peter, are visible ; the 
figures of the Church are all drawn from visible 
objects, such as a city placed upon a mountain, 
a nation, a flock, an army. The Church must 
be visible, for Christ established her as a means 
of salvation for all men in all ages : an invisi- 
ble Church would be useless as a means 



128 THE PRINCIPLE 

of salvation, for no man could discover her ; no 
man could possibly avail himself of the means 
of salvation for the sake of which the Church 
was established. 

That the Catholic Church possesses the char- 
acteristic of unity in faith, communion, govern- 
ment, and possesses it visibly, and in the 
highest perfection, is too clear to need length- 
ened demonstration. No man on earth can 
assign for her any other founder than our Lord 
Jesus Christ. No man on earth can name a 
single article of her faith, which is not equally 
professed by every Catholic in the whole world. 
No man can deny that she administers the 
same Sacraments over the whole globe, and 
offers the same Sacrifice from the rising to the 
setting sun. No one will affirm that Catholics, 
in any portion of the world, recognize any 
supreme visible Head in spiritual matters, but 
the successor of St. Peter, the Roman Pontiff. 
The unity of the Catholic Church is visible, and 
known to all the world. 

On the other hand, Americans, you need 
only cast a glance at Protestantism to see its 
absolute want of unity. It is torn up by an 
enormous multiplicity of conflicting fragment- 
ary sects, retaining not the least semblance of 
union. Even in the lifetime of Luther, as I 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 129 

observed above, Protestantism was split up 
into so many discordant churches, as to pro- 
voke Luther to the confession that the irremedi- 
able discord of Protestant sects stamped 
Protestantism visibly with the seal of error 
and falsehood. 

Every one has heard of Bossuet's great 
" History of the Variations of Protestantism," 
and may read in that work the authentic proofs 
of its innumerable changes. Indeed, Protest- 
antism, more changeable in its colors than the 
chameleon, more variable in its metamorphoses 
than fabled Proteus, is the strangest phenome- 
non of mutability that has ever appeared in 
the world. 

Hcenighaus, a learned German author, com- 
piled a complete Catholic Theology, from Pro- 
testant authors alone ; not that he found in any 
of them a consistent body of Catholic doctrine, 
but by collecting the fragments of Catholic 
truth scattered through their disconnected sys- 
tems, and reuniting them like the pieces of a 
broken mirror. Nothing more is required to 
show that Protestantism is only a departure 
from Catholic truth ; — that, like a prodigal 
child, it has gone from its home, and squand- 
ered the venerable patrimony of the ancient 
holy Faith, 
13 



130 THE 1>RINCIPLE 

Some thirty years ago, the Duke of Anhalt 
Koethen, on his return from Paris, where he 
had become a CathoHc, assembled his council 
of State and a number of Protestant pastors, 
in order to give them an account of his conver- 
sion. He told them that it was chiefly the 
consistent unity of the Catholic doctrine, that 
had induced him to examine it, and finally 
brought about his conversion. He had been 
unable to discover any unity among Protest- 
ants. The pastors contended that the accusa- 
tion was unfounded ; that Protestants agreed 
in the essential points. The Duke asked them, 
" Do you hold the doctrine of justification as 
an essential point of faith ?" " We do." 
" Well, then," continued the Duke, turning to 
one of the pastors, " please tell me how you 
define that doctrine." The pastor gave his 
definition, but had hardly done so when 
another pastor exclaimed, " Excuse me, Duke, 
that is not my idea of justification, I under- 
stand it quite differently." A third one fol- 
lowed with a different definition. The Duke 
ended the dispute, by remarking, '• Gentlemen, 
you have just given me a proof of Protestant 
unity." You cannot say that Catholics contra- 
dict each other in that manner. In matters of 
opinion they may and do differ, but not in 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 131 

matters of faith. The moment a CaihoHc 
denies an article of faith, were he an Aquinas 
in learning, he ceases to be a Catholic. A 
Protestant who contradicts your religious ideas, 
remains a Protestant, and is free to maintain 
his views against all Protestants, for your Re- 
ligion gives every man an absolute right to be 
his own judge in questions of faith. 



SAl^CTITY 

Is the second necessary characteristic of the 
true Church of Christ. It is evident that the 
Church of Christ must be holy in her founder, 
for her founder is Christ Himself. Her means 
of salvation must be holy, for Christ established 
her to be a means of sanctification forever. 
" For them do I sanctify myself, that they also 
may be sanctified in truth,"' etc.* " Be you 
perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect."t 

The language and spirit of the apostolic 
Epistles, their precepts, institutions, admoni- 
tions, counsels, all demonstrate that the true 
Church of Christ must be holy, and an evident 



* John, xvii. 19 et seqq. 
t Matt., V. 48. 



132 THE PRINCIPLE 

^ means of holiness. " Christ loved the Church, 
and delivered Himself up for it, that He might 
sanctify it, cleansing it by the laver of water in 
the word of life ; that He might present it to 
Himself a glorious Church, not having spot or 
wrinkle, nor any such thing ; but that it should 
be holy and without blemish."* 

History testifies that the Church of Christ, in 
the primitive ages, possessed the character of 
sanctity, and therefore she must possess it 
always, for, as I have shown, the Church of 
Christ cannot change. The Fathers and early 
pastors of the Church labored night and day, 
by word and writing, to sanctify the faithful, 
and only recognized those as living members 
of the Church, whose lives were truly Christian. 

The Catholic Church clearly possesses the 
character of sanctity. Her doctrine, her Sacra- 
ments, her Sacrifice are holy, and are means 
of holiness. Saints, whose heroic virtue God 
has attested by manifest miracles, are claimed 
by the Catholic Church alone, and belong to 
her alone. To be alone the mother of all the 
Saints, of all the heroes of Christianity, whose 
purity of life is the light and admiration of the 

* Ephes., V. 25-27. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 133 

world, is an imposing mark of the truth of the 
Catholic Church. 

In the first rank of her Saints, as I men- 
tioned in another point of view, appear seven- 
teen millions of martyrs, of every age, sex, 
rank, and condition of life, all of whom died for 
the • truth of the Catholic faith. This was 
during the first three centuries of the Catholic 
Church. What was so magnificently begun, 
has continued in every age down to our own 
day. Witness Japan, China, Tartary, Africa, 
America in the last two centuries. Witness 
the soil of our own United States, reddened 
with the blood and sanctified by the ashes of 
the Missionaries who fell under the Indian 
tomahawk, or were consumed at the Indian 
stake. Witness China, Cochin-China, Ton- 
quin, and Corea, in the last fift}^ years, and 
Syria at this very time. 

Next in rank to these martyred heroes of the 
Cross, is the venerable line of the holy Fathers 
and Doctors of the Church, from Hermas, 
Clement, Justin, in the first centuries, down to 
St. Bernard, in the twelfth, all of whom were 
Catholics. 

Along with them, in every age, there is a 
host of other Saints, all witnesses to the truth 
of the Catholic Church. Beginning with St. 



134 THE PRINCIPLE 

Peter and Linus, his first successor, we have a 
countless number of holy Popes, Bishops, men 
of learning and eminence, heroic Confessors of 
the faith in every condition and grade of 
society. 

These are the true nobility, the flower of our 
race : their genuine greatness of virtue is 
admired even by our enemies. Leibnitz, one 
of the most learned Protestants of his age, con- 
fesses, in his System of Theology, that the 
Catholic Church has every reason to point to 
the heroic virtues of her Saints, in proof of her 
high birth as the Church of Christ. 

Ignorant men, and even persons otherwise 
well-informed, but prejudiced against the 
Church, may question the miracles by which 
God has attested the heroic virtues and the 
glory of our Saints ; but no one can question 
the eminence of their virtues. No one can 
question their astonishing actions, their zeal, 
their labors, their sacrifices for the conversion 
of nations and the relief of suffering ; and 
this, after all, is the main point. 

But as for the miracles themselves, they are 
not so easily got rid of as some of you may 
imagine. It is not so easy to throw a reason- 
able doubt on them. You cannot name 
another tribunal that performs its duties with 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 135 

SO much impartiality, caution, and severity, as 
the Roman Rota, the court in which the merits 
of reputed saints, and the miracles wrought 
after their death, are discussed and decided on. 
This undeniable fact it is worth while to illu- 
strate at some length. 

When application is made for the canoniza- 
tion of a reputed saint, no step is taken by the 
Roman tribunal, until evident proofs are 
brought forward upon oath, that the person in 
question practised, in life and death, not only 
eminent theological and moral virtues, but 
heroic virtues tested by extraordinary trials. 

No miracles are admitted in proof of sanctity, 
except such as were wrought after the death of 
the servant of God in favor of persons who had 
recourse to his intercession. No miracles per- 
formed during his lifetime, were they hundreds 
or thousands in number, as in the case of St. 
Gregory Thaumaturgus or St. Francis de 
Hieronymo, are admitted or even examined 
with a view to canonization. As to miracles 
wrought after death, Rome requires that they 
be first ascertained, in a judicial process, by 
the Bishop of the Diocese where they are said 
to have occurred, and testified to by creditable 
witnesses under oath. If the Bishop rejects 
the miracles, no further step is taken by the 



136 THE PRINCIPLE 

Roman court. If he admits them as genuine, 
Rome is not yet satisfied, but appoints another 
judicial commission to renew the investigation, 
and the witnesses summoned are again exa- 
mined under oath. If both commissions agree 
in declaring the miracles undeniably genuine, 
a third process is instituted before the Roman 
Rota: all the facts are re-examined, the value 
of the testimony subjected to a rigorous dis- 
cussion, and the case decided only after mature 
and protracted deliberation. Indeed, the slow- 
ness of the Roman court is proverbial. 

A recent event will illustrate it. An Eng- 
lishman at Rome, in a conversation with a 
Cardinal on the truth of the Catholic Religion, 
expressed the opinion that Catholic Saints are 
made at pleasure, and miracles forged to sup- 
port the canonization. The process of the 
canonization of St. Francis Regis was then 
pending. " Sir," replied the Cardinal, " the 
best answer I can give you, is to let you 
examine for yourself the pieces in a process of 
canonization actually going on. Read these 
papers." The papers were the juridical record 
of some hundreds of miracles wrought by the 
intercession of St. Francis Regis after his 
death. The Englishman was astonished at the 
accuracy of investigation displayed in the 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 137 

record, and at the weight of testimony by 
which every miracle was supported. On 
returning the papers to the Cardinal, he could 
not help expressing his astonishment. " If 
every Roman miracle," he observed, " were 
proved as well as these, I should have no diffi- 
culty in believing all the miracles we read of in 
the lives of your Saints." " Why sir," answered 
the Cardinal, smiling, " the Roman court is not 
satisfied with the proofs of a single one of 
those miracles." 

Now tell me, my Protestant friends, how 
many Saints Protestantism has produced; give 
me their names, and let me know what miracles 
have been performed by their prayers, in their 
lifetime or after their death. 

The lives of your founders are notorious all 
the world over. You would be ashamed to 
read Luther's Table Talk before your children. 
But not to enlarge on the sensual German 
Reformer, I will invite you onl}^ to look back to 
the country from which you have received the 
Reformation. Will you appeal to the adulterer 
Henry VIII., or to the Virgin Queen of more 
than suspicious memory ? How many Pro- 
testant martyrs, bishops, pastors, widows, 
virgins are set down in your Calendar of Saints ? 
What miracles have they performed? You 



138 THE PRINCIPLE 

are so far from claiming any Saints of your 
own. that the questions must appear ridiculous. 
Still, in the Apostles' Creed, you say with us, 
" I believe in the communion of Saints," and 
confess your belief in " the holy CathoUc 
Church." The Church, such as you have made 
it for yourselves, is a withered tree bearing no 
fruits of sanctity. 

The very names you receive at your birth 
must remind you of the absolute barrenness of 
Protestantism. You have not a single Pro- 
testant Saint. If you wish to give your child- 
ren a Christian name, the name of a Saint, you 
are obliged to have recourse to the Catholic 
calendar. You call your children by Catholic 
names, such as Charles, Francis, Henry, 
Edward, Catharine, Elizabeth. You even give 
them the names of Catholic Saints who lived 
after the Reformation, — Aloysius, Teresa, etc. 
Those among you who dislike all such names, 
because they would remind them too often of 
the Catholic Church as the Mother of Saints, 
have to go back to the old Jews, and borrow 
the names of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, 
Reuben, Rebecca, Sarah, Judith, etc. ; or 
descend to a lower level, and adopt names 
from among the saints of the political tribune. 

You know as well as I do what has come to 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 139 

be the ideal of sanctity with many who call 
themselves Protestants. When the}" can say 
of a man, He is a perfect gentleman, or of a 
v/oman, She is an accomplished lady, they are 
satisfied. When a man outstrips his neighbor 
in business, and gets rich in a short time, he is 
raised on the altars of public admiration. This 
language may sound harsh and bitter, yet 
every one of you will say. It is so. Con- 
fessing, as you do in the Creed, that the 
Church is holy, and still not to be able to show 
a single Saint, is bad enough. 



UNIVERSALITY 

Is the third necessary character of the Church 
of Christ. He founded His Church for all 
times and all places. " Go ye and teach all 
nations. . . . And behold I am with you 
all days even to the consummation of the 
world."* " I will ask the Father, and He shall 
give you another Paraclete, that He may abide 
with you forever."! 

Hence the rapid spread of the Church in the 

* Matt., xxviii. 20. 
f John, xiv. 16. 



140 THE PRINCIPLE 

very first age of her existence. The Acts of 
the Apostles, the Epistles of St. Paul,* and all 
cotemporary history, testify to her difiusion 
over the whole Roman empire, and beyond its 
boundaries, within the lifetime of the Apostles. 

It is self-evident, indeed, that if Christ 
founded any Church at all, it must have been 
for the w^hole human race, because the wants 
of men, which He designed His Church to 
supply, are substantially the same in all men 
and in all ages. 

The characteristic of universality evidently 
belongs to the Catholic Church. She is 
universal in time and place. She exists in all 
the nations and regions of the globe ; she 
counts her ages by the ages of Christianity ; 
the whole world is her home, and all time her 
duration. She is universal, particularly, in 
the sense that she is the Mother of all the 
races and tribes ever converted to Christianity. 

What Tertullian remarked of the heretics of 
his time, sixteen hundred years ago, is true to- 
day, " They can pervert, but not convert, that 
is, of Catholics they make non-Catholics ; of 
children of one Church, sectarians and schism- 
atics ; of Christians, non-Christians ; of be- 
lievers, infidels : but to convert one nation of 

* Rom., i. 8. J Coloss. i. 6, 6. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 141 

heathens to Christianity is beyond their power. 
Such is the loud testimony of history in favor 
of the Catholic Church." 

Every nation, that is Christian now, or ever 
was Christian, was converted by Catholic mis- 
sionaries. Let us go through the list, begin- 
ning at the extreme west of Europe. St. 
Patrick and his companions, all Catholics, con- 
verted Ireland. St. Augustine, a Catholic, and 
his Catholic companions converted England. 
France was converted by St. Remigius and his 
Catholic fellow-bishops ; Germany by St. Boni- 
face, St. Kilian, Willibald, and others, all 
Catholics ; Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, by 
Ansgar and Sturmius, two Catholic bishops ; 
Prussia, by St. Adalbert, a Catholic ; Sclavonia 
and Bulgaria, by Cyril and Methodius, two 
Catholic bishops ; Russia, by Ignatius of Con- 
stantinople and his associates, all Catholics. 
St. Stephen, a Catholic king, converted Hun- 
gary through Catholic missionaries. In Asia, 
from Japan, China, and India, to the Mediter- 
ranean ; in Africa, from ocean to ocean, every 
nation and tribe converted to Christianity, was 
converted by Catholic missionaries. On the 
Western Continent, since its discovery by 
Catholic navigators, it has been the same. 
The savages of Peru, Chili, Brazil, Buenos 



142 THE PRINCIPLE 

Ayres, Paraguay, the whole of South Ameiica, 
as far as it is Christian, has been evangeUzed 
and converted by the Catholic Church. Catho- 
lics have converted and civilized many tribes 
of Indians in Central America and Mexico. 
In North America, your own historians have 
recorded the labors of Catholic missionaries in 
every wood, desert, and prairie. The Christian 
tribes north of the Lakes and in several other 
parts of Canada, in Oregon, and Kansas, are 
the fruits of Catholic zeal ; and but for the out- 
break and interference of Protestantism, our 
success would have been much greater. Ca- 
tholic missionaries, observes Dr. Brownson, in 
a number of his celebrated Quarterly, have 
converted and civilized numerous Indian tribes 
in North America, and still more of them in 
South America. You could drive them before 
you, but you could not convert them. The 
islands of the Pacific, at this moment, are 
evangelized with great success by hosts of 
intrepid Catholic missionaries. 

Name, if you can, a single heathen nation 
converted by Protestants. No such nation 
exists. I know you have expended millions of 
money in keeping up large families of mission- 
aries, and scattering millions of Bibles on every 
shore to which your vessels sail. But your 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 143 

Bible missions cannot convert the heathen. 
The savage and the Chinese use your Bibles to 
light the calumet or the opium bowl. The re- 
ports of your own interested and richly paid mis- 
sionaries, furnish sufficient ground for doubting 
your success. It is certain that St. Francis 
Xavier alone, in ten years, converted a thousand 
times more Pagans in India and Japan, than you 
have done, with all your Bible and Missionary 
Aid Societies, in three hundred years. The 
missionary success of a single Catholic insti- 
tution, the Roman Propaganda, surpasses, 
beyond comparison, the combined result of the 
influence, wealth, and power of Great Britain 
and America. 



mDESTRUCTIBILITY 

Is the fourth necessary character of the 
Church of Christ, to which I propose to direct 
your attention. " I say to thee. That thou art 
Peter, and upon this rock I will build my 
Church ; and the gates of hell shall not prevail 
against it." " Go ye, and teach all nations. . . 
Behold I am with you all days, even to the 



144 THE PRINCIPLE 

consummation of the world."* From these 
and similar passages before cited, it is evident, 
that Christ will never suffer His Church to be 
destroyed. 

Hence, in the earliest times, iadestructibility 
was held to be an essential characteristic of the 
Church of Christ. St. Jerome, in the fourth 
century, wrote, " The Church is built on Peter. 
No storm can shake her, no raging tempest 
overthrow her."f St. Alexander, Bishop of 
Alexandria in the beginning of the same age, 
wrote to Alexander of Constantinople, '' We 
acknowledge but one Church, the Catholic and 
Apostolic, which, as she never can be van- 
quished, though the whole world should assail 
her, so, on the other hand, conquers and 
destroys every atrocious attack of heresy." 
Indeed, if the Church could be destroj^ed, 
Christ would have failed in the object he had 
in view in founding her, which was to make 
her a means of salvation for all ages. That 
Christ has failed in this design no one will 
say. 

Now, the Catholic Church alone on earth 
possesses the character of indestructibility. 
Everything on earth decays, except the Catho- 

* See texts, nt supra. 

t Comment, in cap. xvi Matt, 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 145 

lie Church. She is the image of her Founder, 
the most perfect reflection in the world of the 
immutability of God, of that supreme Beauty, 
which St. Augustine called ever ancient and 
ever new. Like Christ her Founder, she is 
" yesterday and to-day, and the same forever." 
Like St. John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, 
the Church, the Spouse of Jesus, rises out of 
persecution with new vigor and renewed youth. 
You call her the Old Church. She is old, 
but as youthful in her old age, as when she 
went forth on Pentecost, fresh from the hands 
of the Holy Ghost, to the conquest of the 
world. Name a Church or sect in our age that 
equals her in vigor. You know the words of 
Gamaliel, the Pharisee, in the Acts : " If this 
design, or work, be of men, it will fall to 
nothing ; but if it be of God, you are not able 
to destroy it : lest perhaps ye be found to 
oppose God."* What would Gamaliel say at 
this hour, were he to rise from the dead ? 
Nearly nineteen hundred years have since gone 
by, nineteen centuries of struggles and of 
triumph. Power, learning, genius, heresy, 
schism, vice, determined foes without, en- 
venomed conspirators within, all earth and hell 

* Acts, V. 38, 39. 

14 



146 THE PKINCIPLE 

combined, have been laboring for nineteen 
centuries at her destruction, and the Church 
survives in her pristine vigor. 

The world has not seen any other example 
of such a duration. St. Augustine said of the 
rapid spread of Christianity, that by itself alone 
it was a sufficient proof of the Divinity of the 
Catholic Church. The dilemma he made use 
of, is just as unanswerable when applied to the 
duration of the Catholic Church. Either the 
Catholic Church has existed for nineteen cen- 
turies by a miracle, or without a miracle : if by 
miracle, she is Divine ; if without miracle, in 
spite of atrocious and ever-enduring opposition, 
on the ruins of all the empires that ever rose 
or flourished around her, then she herself is the 
greatest of all miracles, and you have the 
highest of all proofs that she is Divine. 

History presents no parallel to her insignifi- 
cant beginning, rapid growth, and permanent 
duration. At the moment when Peter came 
from Antioch to Rome, and entered the Impe- 
rial City, a poor, barefoot, way-worn traveler 
covered with dust, if a prophet standing at the 
gate had pointed him out with outstretched 
arm, and said to the passing throng, " Do you 
see that gray-haired stranger ? He is a poor 
fisherman from Galilee. The successors of 



OP PROTESTANTISM. 147 

that Jewish fisherman will rale the world to its 
utmost boundaries from your own City and on 
the ruins of your Empire ; kings, princes, na- 
tions, republics, the Roman, Greek, and barbar- 
ian, will acknowledge their religious sway, and 
obey their spiritual commands for centuries after 
the Roman power shall have departed forever, 
and the remembrance of your glory hardly sur- 
vive in the memories ofthe remotest posterity." 
Every Roman would have laughed at the pro- 
phecy, and pointed at the prophet as a mad- 
man ; and when, not many years later, Peter 
was nailed on across with his head downwards, 
they might have brought the prophet to the 
spot, and said in scorn. There hangs your pro- 
phecy. And yet upon that very spot, reddened 
with the blood of the Prince of the Apostles, 
and known under the name of the Confession 
of St. Peter, has sprung up the mighty tree 
that now overshadows the earth, its trunk 
rooted at Rome in the martyred ashes of the 
first Pope, growing more vigorous with every 
storm that assails it, its branches still spread- 
ing and growing mightier, as ages multiply 
upon its venerable head, and the nations that 
seek shelter in its holy shade become more 
numerous from age to age. 

Religious, Catholic Rome, said Leo the 



148 THE PRINCIPLE 

Great, has become mightier than Pagan Rome 
in the meridian of her splendor. And what is 
particularly worthy of repeated notice, her un- 
equalled duration and unrivalled religious 
sway have not been the work of human power : 
all human power has opposed her. For nine- 
teen hundred years the mighty hand of leagued 
envy and malice has been upon the Tree 
endeavoring to tear it up from the soil, and 
leave it a withered trunk to be despised and 
forgotten. 

You know the fierce rage of the Roman 
Empire against the Catholic Church for three 
hundred years. After Constantine had placed 
the Cross upon his crown and upon the banners 
of his armies, a new race of persecutors arose, 
beginning with his son Constantius, and con- 
tinuing through the Middle Ages down to our 
time : emperors, kings, consuls have hardly 
ever ceased to assail the Catholic Church with 
the cunning of a Julian or the violence of a 
Valens. The history passing before your own 
eyes, while I trace these lines, Turin, Paris, 
the midnight conspiracies at Rome, present 
scenes of consummate hatred, exquisite cun- 
ning, refined malice, bloodthirsty cruelty, that 
are not unworthy a Julian or a Diocletian. 

Philosophy, heresy, schism, have united their 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 149 

efforts with the attacks of power. From Cel- 
sus, under the first Caesars, to Voltaire, Strauss, 
Saint-Simon, Fourier, Leroux, philosophy has 
exerted its evil genius to sap the foundations 
of Catholic dogmas. From Simon Magus and 
the Gnostics to Luther and the Mormons, from 
Photius to Febronius, heresy has not ceased to 
aim at the corruption of her faith, and schism 
at the destruction of her unit3^ Men have dug 
at the roots of the Tree, and sought to under- 
mine it ; they have tried to overthrow the ven- 
erable trunk, and have hacked at its branches. 
Still its roots are as firmly fixed as ever, the 
trunk stands upright, and growing still. If a 
branch has fallen, it lies withered where it fell, 
and another bough has replaced it. When 
England and a part of Germany fell off" from 
the Church, Paraguay, Japan, India, the ex- 
treme East and West, rose in their stead. 
Earth and hell, passion and malice, have done 
their worst, and they have failed and shall 
forever fail. 

Were the Pope and the Church to be driven 
back to the Catacombs from which they rose 
in triumph fifteen hundred years ago, the per- 
secution would but prepare for them another 
triumph. Pius IX. knows it, and hence his 
fearless attitude, awing his enemies, and 



150 THE PRINCIPLE 

attracting the admiration of the world. The 
whole Catholic Church knows it, and hence 
the calm with which we look forward to the 
future. Come what may, the Church will stand. 
" The gates of hell shall not prevail against 
her." Christ is with us " to the consummation 
of the world." 

Everywhere and in all times the Church 
conquers. Everywhere and in all times, she 
is the indestructible Kingdom of the Truth. 
She may be stripped and sent forth naked into 
the world, still she conquers, for she remains 
the dispenser of the graces of God to men, the 
guide of the human race, the hand that opens 
the gates of heaven, the only hope of salvation. 
" I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of 
heaven."* 

Now, turn to Protestantism, and compare it 
with the Church. The opposition between 
light and darkness is not more complete. 
The Catholic Church lives, Protestantism is 
dead. It is a branch fallen from the Tree, 
withered even in the time of him who cut it off, 
and hewn to fragments, its dry leaves long 
since reduced to dust and scattered to the four 
winds of heaven. The Protestantism of Lu- 
ther, Calvin, Zwingli is destroyed. Hardly 

* Matt. xvi. 19. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 151 

any one now-a-days believes as they believed. 
Even Baptism is fast being given up altogether. 
Many u^ho bear the name of Protestants, are 
infidels in principle and practice : unbaptized, 
they do not possess the necessary qualification 
to be Christians. Unbaptized Protestants are 
more numerous in this country, than the bap- 
tized adherents of all the Protestant denomina- 
tions put together. 

Your meeting-houses would long since have 
been deserted, your sects reduced to mere 
names, but for your keeping up a semblance of 
life by your Revivals. The country, as far as 
it is Protestant, would no longer exhibit any 
sign of Christianity^ were it not for your strict 
Sunday laws imposing an appearance of 
Christianity. 

But all your Revivals and Sunday laws, 
never will and never can revive Protestantism. 
Protestants may continue to exist, but Protest- 
antism is dead, and its death was almost coeval 
with its birth. A Protestantism, one and 
united, has no existence, if it ever had. 

To conclude, the Catholic Church alone has 
the characteristics of the Church which Christ 
founded ; she alone, therefore, is the true 
Church of Christ, and out of her pale there Is 
no salvation. Every candid man who examines" 



152 THE PRINCIPLE 

the question, can easily convince himself of it. 
The Catholic Church is the City of God, visible 
over the whole earth to every man of 
good will. Protestantism lacks every one of 
the characteristics of the true Church of Christ, 
and cannot lead to Heaven. 

Study the history of Catholicity and that of 
Protestantism with the candor of the celebrated 
Swiss Protestant Hurter, and like him you 
will become convinced that Protestantism is 
nothing more than a deviation from the truth, 
and that the Catholic Church alone is the 
identical Church founded by Christ. As soon as 
a Protestant begins to look into the groundwork 
of his creed, his belief begins to waver. A 
Catholic is secure. History, reason, experience, 
studies of every kind, confirm him in his faith. 
A true Catholic meets martyrdom with the full 
assurance that he dies for the truth. Peter the 
Martyr, a convert to the Catholic faith from 
Manicheism, when he fell under the hatchets 
of the heretics, and could no longer profess his 
faith aloud, wrote in the sand with his blood — 
I believe. Every Catholic is as firmly con- 
vinced of the truth of his faith, as that hero 
was when about to appear before God. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 153 



THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE CATHOLIC 
CHURCH, THE KULE OF FAITH. 

The Catholic Church is the true Church of 
Jesus Christ; therefore she is Infallible. No 
man of logical mind can dispute this conse- 
quence. The Infallibilit}^ of the Church follows 
evidently from her character as the Divinely 
commissioned Teacher of all nations to the end 
of time; and it is further confirmed by the 
express promises of Christ, and by the conduct 
of the primitive Church. 

I say, in the first place, that the Infallibility 
of the Church is a necessary consequence of 
her Divine commission as the Teacher of men. 
To deny the Infallibility of the Church, while 
you admit her Divine commission, is to impeach 
the veracity and the wisdom of God. 

Christ commanded His Church to teach all 
nations to the end of time : to pretend that His 
Church is fallible, is to assert implicitly that, in 
case she errs, He commanded her to teach false- 
hood, and made it obligatory on men to believe 

error. If Christ has not secured the Infalli- 
15 



154 THE PRINCIPLE 

bility of the Church by the assistance of His 
Spirit, error must inevitably be taught as 
Divine truth, for the Church teaches in His 
name, and enforces her doctrines as derived 
from Him, and therefore as Divine truth. I 
repeat it, therefore, the character of the Church 
as a Divinely commissioned Teacher, is the 
proof of her Infallibility. 

Secondly, her claim to Infallibility is con- 
firmed by the clearest and most explicit pro- 
mises of Christ. He affirmed that He would 
build His Church upon a rock, and that the 
gates of hell should not prevail against her. 
He addressed His Apostles in the following 
explicit language : " As the Father has sent 
me, I send you. Go ye, therefore, and teach 
all nations, teaching them to observe all things 
whatsoever I have commanded you. And 
behold, I am with you all days, even to the 
consummation of the world." " He who hears 
you, hears me." " And when the Paraclete, the 
Holy Ghost shall come, whom the Father shall 
send in my name, He will teach you all things, 
and bring all things to your mind whatsoever I 
shall have said to you." " I shall ask the 
Father that He may abide with you forever." 

According to these promises, the Holy Ghost 
is to perform two great functions in the Church 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 155 

of Christ — first, " to teach her all things," 
secondly, to "bring all things to her mind" 
which Christ has taught er ; and to do 
all this forever. What the Holy Ghost 
" teaches" the Church, must be the truth; that 
of which He reminds her, is the doctrine of 
Christ. The Church, therefore, has an infal- 
lible guide, who, because He is infaUible, must 
render her infallible, and who, on all proper 
occasions, puts her in mind of " all things 
whatsoever" which Christ has taught her. 
Hence, in listening to the teaching of the 
Church, we listen to the voice of God. 
Whoever refuses to listen to her, is to be 
regarded " as a heathen and a publican." 

I ask you, can. you reflect on these distinct 
promises of Christ, without concluding that He 
endowed the Church with the attribute of 
Infallibility ? Will you, while believing that 
Christ is God, take it amiss that we believe in 
His promises, or that we abhor the thought 
that His promises have failed, as they must 
have done if His Church has erred or c»an err ? 
If the Church is fallible, she was not built upon 
a rock, but upon a quicksand, and the gates of 
hell may prevail against her : indeed, if we are 
to believe Protestantism, the gates of hell have 
long since prevailed against the Church of 



156 THE PRINCIPLE 

Christ. But if the Church has erred, Christ 
cannot be God — He would be an impostor ; 
the Holy Spirit is not, has not been with the 
Church of Christ ; those who hear the Church, 
would often hear, not God, but the spirit of error ; 
while those who refuse to recognize her Divine 
authority, would not be heathens and publicans, 
but wiser than believers. All this evidently 
involves, in the judgment of all who really 
believe in Christ as the Son of God, contradic- 
tion and blasphemy. 

Thirdly, the claim of Infallibility is further 
confirmed by the manner in which the primi- 
tive Church fulfilled her Divine mission. On 
the day of Pentecost, immediately after the 
reception of the Holy Ghost, the Apostles 
began the ministry of teaching, committed to 
them by the Son of God. Later, we 
find them assembled again in Jerusalem in 
solemn council, prefacing their decisions with 
the following remarkable declaration : " It has 
seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us," 
thus claiming the infallible assistance of the 
Spirit of God. 

It must be remarked likewise, that, while the 
Apostles spread the Gospel amongst the 
nations, they selected and ordained proper 
persons to be their coadjutors and successors, 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 157 

just as they elected an Apostle to take the 
place of Judas Iscariot. They would not per- 
mit any one not ordained and sent by them to 
teach in the name of Christ. The faith taught 
by the Church must be Apostolic ; that is, it 
must be the same now as it was in the time of 
the Apostles. This follows from the ver}^ 
nature of the Church of Christ, for, as I have 
shown, the Church cannot change ; it follows 
from the promises of Christ, and it is strongly 
inculcated by His Apostles. A curse is pro- 
nounced against any one who should attempt 
to preach a new doctrine. " Though I, or an 
angel from heaven," says St. Paul, " preach 
any other gospel unto you, than that you h ve 
received, let him be accursed."* The Church, 
therefore, must be infallible now, as she was 
when Christ established her, for if she is fallible 
we cannot be certain that she teaches the 
same doctrine as the Apostles. 

The Church is unchangeable ; she is the same 
now as in the days of Christ. Are you pre- 
pared to say that the Church was fallible in the 
time of Christ and the Apostles ? If she was 
infallible then, she is infallible now. The 
attribute of infallibility was not a prerogative 

* Galat., i. 



158 THE PRINCIPLE 

exclusively attached to the persons of the 
Apostles, but inseparably connected with their 
office, in the same manner as the Church was 
not instituted for them alone, but for the salva- 
tion of men to the end of time. 

The Son of God was sent into the world by 
the Eternal Father, to create and organize the 
Church, and He sent forth the Apostles with the 
same supernatural power and perpetual author- 
ity that He Himself had received from the 
Father. " As my Father sent me, so I send 
you." The Apostles and their legitimate 
successors constitute one and the same Church. 
" Behold I am with you all days even to the 
consummation of the world." The super- 
natural power which Christ communicated to 
His Church, was given for the preservation of 
the faith which He had revealed, and cannot 
be limited by time, any more than the faith 
itself Like Christ Himself the Church is 
" to-day, and yesterday, and the same forever;" 
she is Infallible in all ages. 

The argument which I have thus briefly 
stated is developed with great cogency and 
eloquence, in an essay by Dr. Brownson on 
the "Constitution and Organic Character of 
the Church ;" from which I make the following 
extract : 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 159 

" The Catholic Church, as a body or corpor- 
ation, the only sense in which it is alleged to 
have any teaching faculty at all, is not an 
aggregation of individuals who at any time 
compose it — a body born and dying with them, 
but the contemporary of our Lord and His 
Apostles, in immediate communion with them, 
and thus annihilating all distance of time and 
place between them and us. She is, in the 
sense supposed, a corporation, and, like every 
corporation, a collective individual possessing 
the attribute of immortality. She knows no 
interruption, no succession of moments, no 
lapse of years. Like the eternal God, who is 
ever with her, and whose organ she is, she has 
duration, but no succession. She can never 
grow old, never fall into the past. The indivi- 
duals who compose her body may change, but 
she changes not; one by one they may pass off, 
and one by one be renewed, while she con- 
tinues ever the same The Church 

to-day is identically that very body w^hich saw 
our Lord when he tabernacled in the flesh. She 
who is our dear Mother, and on whose words 
we hang with so much delight, beheld with her 
own eyes the stupendous miracles which were 
performed in Judea eighteen hundred years 
ago ; she assisted at the preaching of the 



160 THE PRINCIPLE 

Apostles on the day of Pentecost, when the 
Holy Ghost descended upon them in cloven 
tongues of fire; she heard St. Peter, the prince 
of the Apostles, relate how the Spirit descended 
upon Cornelius and his household, and declare 
how God had chosen that by his mouth the 
Gentiles should hear the Word of God and 
believe; she listened with charmed ear and 
ravished heart to the last admonition of the 
disciple whom Jesus loved : — ' My dear child- 
ren, love one another ;' she saw the old temple 
razed to the ground, the legal rights of the old 
covenant abolished, and the once chosen people 
driven out from the Holy Land, and scattered 
over the earth ; she beheld pagan Rome, in the 
pride and pomp of power, bled under her per- 
secuting emperors, and finally planted the cross 
in triumph on her ruins. She has been the 
contemporary of eighteen hundred years, 
which she has arrested in their flight and made 
present to us, and will make present to all 
generations as they rise. With one hand she 
receives the depositum of faith from the Lord 
and his commissioned Apostles ; with the other 
she imparts it to us. ^ 

"... What needs she, to do it with 
infallible certainty ? Simply protection against 
forgetting, misunderstanding, and misstating; 



OF PROTESTANTISM. IGl 

and this she has, because she has our Lord 
always abiding with her, and the Paraclete, 
who leads her into all truth, and ' brings to her 
remembrance' all the words spoken to her by 
our Lord himself personally, or by his inspired 
Apostles, — keeping her memory always fresh, 
rendering her infallible assistance rightly to 
understand and accurately to express what she 
remembers to have been taught." 

Consequently the Infallibility of the Church 
does not, as many Protestants imagine we teach, 
extend to every object of science or politics, 
but is exclusively confined to the teaching and 
preservation of that Divine faith which Jesus 
Christ revealed for the salvation of mankind. 
In this respect, she demands our unconditional 
submission to her decisions, but only when she 
promulgates her doctrine by a solemn definition. 
In doing so she, as we have shown, only exer- 
cises her legitimate right. Her Infallible 
teaching is the only Rule of Faith. 

I may remark in conclusion, that the practice 
of those who deny the Infallibility of the 
Church, is in contradiction with their theory. 
While asserting that there is no infallible 
authority in matters of faith, they have recourse 
invariably to some supreme and final authority 
which they practically hold to be infallible. 



162 THE PRINCIPLE 

Whatever they assume as their Rule of Faith, 
whether reason, Scripture, common sense, 
private interpretation or private inspiration, 
they practically regard it as an authority from 
which there is no appeal, as an authority 
infallible in matters of faith. It is strange, 
indeed, that non-Catholics hardly ever perceive 
this striking inconsistency between their theory 
as regards the Church and their practice in 
deciding upon their own belief. In the follow- 
ing pages, you will find a further illustration of 
the inconsistency of Protestantism. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 163 



SECTION II. 



THE UNTENABILITY OF THE PROTEST- 
ANT PRINCIPLE. 



I have now developed the conclusive argu- 
ment that the Catholic Church is the true 
Church because she is the first Church, and 
alone possesses the marks of the true Church 
of Christ, and that her infallible teaching is the 
Rule of Faith. What decisive reasons have 
you to convince yourselves, that what you 
believe is the true Religion of Christ ? You 
appeal to the Bible. 

That the Bible is the only Rule of Faith, 
is the fundamental doctrine of Protestantism, 
first asserted by Martin Luther. " What 
do I care," said Luther, "for six hundred 
Augustines and Jeromes ? With the Bible in 



164 THE PRINCIPLE 

our hand, we can judge the Fathers, the Apos- 
tles, and even the Church. 

The Bible is the war-cry of Protestantism. No 
doubt, the Bible is a Divinely inspired book, but 
the manner in which many among you appeal to 
the Bible, reminds me of the tumult raised at 
Ephesus by the preaching of St. Paul. The 
only answer which the Ephesians would give 
him, was to cry for two hours, " Great is Diana 
of the Ephesians.-' Many Protestants do no 
better. Instead of listening to our arguments, 
or trying to answer them, they cry out, The 
Bible, the Bible, — as if, indeed. Catholics 
denied the Bible. " When the town-clerk of 
Ephesus had appeased the people, he said. Ye 
men of Ephesus, what man is there that know- 
eth not that the city of Ephesus is a worshipper 
of the great Diana ?" I would ask, likewise, 
Who is there among us that rejects the Bible ? 
The Catholic Church has always taught, and 
Catholics have always believed, that the Bible 
is the word of God ; they believed it fourteen 
centuries before the birth of Protestantism. 1 
will show you, that as long as the Bible is the 
Bible, that is, the word of God, you can never 
justify Protestantism from the Bible. 

But, before entering on the discussion, I ask 
you, From whom did you receive the Bible ? 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 1G5 

Was it written by Luther, under Divine inspir- 
ation, or brought down to him from Heaven by 
an angel ? You have received the Bible from 
the Catholic Church : you know that the Bible 
is the Bible, the inspired word of God, only 
because you have received it as such from the 
infallible authority of the Catholic Church. 

From the Bible itself you cannot prove its 
inspiration. You cannot discover in it a list 
of the inspired books. You cite in vain such 
passages as the following from the second 
Epistle to Timothy : " All Scripture is divinely 
inspired." Neither this nor any other passage 
tells 3'OU whether this or that particular book 
is of Divine inspiration : the precise books that 
are to be received as the inspired word of God, 
you can only learn from the Catholic Church. 
St. Augustine was right in saying, " I would 
not believe in the Gospel, if the authority of 
the Church did not oblige me to do so." 

You maintain that the Church from whom 
you have received the Bible, is essentially cor- 
rupt : how then do you know that she has not 
unscrupulously falsified or interpolated it, as 
Luther did in the famous passage of the Epistle 
to the Romans, " We account a man to be 
justified by faith," to which Luther added the 
word "alone." If the Church was in error for 



166 THE PRINCIPLE 

a thousand years, as you maintain, who can 
assure you that during so long a period of wil- 
ful corruption, she did not change, remodel, 
mutilate, or at least interpolate the Scripture ? 
You do not accuse the Church of having falsi- 
fied the Bible ; your silence is an implicit 
admission, that she has seen nothing in it that 
contradicts her claims ; and such is the real 
state of the case. 

Once more I affirm that without the Catholic 
Church you cannot know that the Bible is an 
inspired book. If Luther and the early Re- 
formers had claimed that they had received the 
Bible from the hands of an angel, as Mahomet 
claimed for the Koran, Protestantism would 
have some show of consistency : as it is, Pro- 
testantism contradicts itself, and must either 
acknowledge the infallibility of the Catholic 
Church, or give up the inspiration of the Bible. 

But admitting for the sake of argument, that 
you could know from other sources that the 
Bible is the inspired word of God, still you 
cannot assume it as a Rule of Faith. A Rule 
of Faith ought to be clear, complete from the 
beginning of its existence, universal, accessible 
to every one, and capable of settling all dis- 
putes relating to faith. 

1 . A Rule of Faith must be clear to every 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 1G7 

body, for as the faith is intended for all men, 
the Rule of Faith must be adapted to the com- 
prehension of all, easily and perfectly intelli- 
gible to the meanest capacity, because faith is 
incompatible with religious doubt. 

Is the Bible easily intelligible, clear to every 
one ? Evidently not. To pretend that it is 
enough to read it to be fully instructed in 
every thing necessary for salvation, is as 
extravagant as to maintain that to be a man 
of learning it is enough to buy a scientific work 
and read it, without preparatory training or 
guidance. 

St. Peter says, speaking of the Epistles of 
St. Paul, that in them there are, " some things 
hard to be understood, and which the unlearned 
and unstable wrest, as also the other Scrip- 
tures, to their own perdition."* Universal 
experience testifies to the obscurity of many 
passages of the Bible. The Jews misunder- 
stood the Old Testament. With the Bible in 
their hands, they did not recognize in Christ 
the Messiah foretold by the prophets ; they 
rejected and crucified Him. During the 
Christian era, the Bible has been misunderstood 
in all ages by those who have rejected the 

* 2 Pet., iii. 16. 



168 THE PRINCIPLE 

authority of the Catholic Church. St. Jerome 
remarked fifteen hundred years ago, " By texts 
of Scripture every heretic has always found 
means to bolster up his errors." St. Augus- 
tine, at a somewhat later period, made a simi- 
lar remark : " How do so many heresies arise," 
he asks, " but because the Scripture, though 
good in itself, is not rightly understood?" 
You know the history of the eunuch of Can- 
dace, related in the Acts. When Philip asked 
him whether he understood the prophet Isaiah 
whom he was reading, the eunuch aske^ him 
with astonishment, " How can I, unless some 
one show me?"* If a man of education, who 
spoke a kindred language, could not under- 
stand Isaiah at that time, how can men at the 
present day pretend to understand the whole 
Scripture without guide or comment ? St. 
Jerome was so shocked at the presumptuous 
assurance of the heretics of his time, that he 
exclaimed indignantly, " Carpenters stick to 
their own trade, cooks to their kitchen, but the 
Scriptures every one thinks himself competent 
to explain !" How would that learned Father 
of the Church have spoken, had some one in 
his day presumed to set up the private inter- 

* Acts, viii. 31. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 169 

pretation of the Bible as the only Rule of 
Faith ? Yet you maintain that all mankind, 
those who cannot read as well as those who 
can, must rely for their faith on their own pri- 
vate interpretation of the Bible. And what is 
still more astonishing is, that, by your own 
admission. Private Interpretation is fallible. 
If fallible, it cannot be the Rule of Faith, for 
faith excludes doubt, and fallibility does not. 

2. A Rule of Faith must be complete, that is, 
it must contain every article of Faith. This is 
not the case with the Bible. St. John says at 
the close of his Gospel, " There are also many 
other things which Jesus did, which if they were 
written every one, the world itself, I think, 
would not be able to contain the books that 
should be written." It is evident that Christ, 
in his three years of public life, must have 
taught much that is not recorded in the Gospels. 
So with the ApostJes. They preached the 
faith all over the w^orld, as St. Paul testifies in 
his epistle to the Colossians,* yet but few of 
them wrote anything at all, and what they did 
write besides the Gospels, Acts, Apocalypse, 
was in the form of occasional Epistles ; not one 
of them has left us a complete systematic 
treatise on faith. In their Epistles, they fre- 

* Colos., i. 6, 6. 
If) 



170 THE PRINCIPLE 

quently refer to their oral teachings, and 
attach just as much importance to these as to 
their writings. St. Paul says, " Therefore, 
brethren, stand firm : and hold the traditions 
which you have learned, whether by word or by 
our epistle."* St. John says, " I had many 
things to write unto thee, but I would not by 
ink and pen write to thee. But I hope speedily 
to see thee ; and we will speak face to face."f 
Will you maintain that all that Christ and the 
Apostles ever taught or preached, beyond what 
has been written, was of no importance, and 
contained nothing pertaining to the faith ? 

Tell me why you baptize infants, though 
there is not a word about infant baptism in the 
whole Scripture ? and why you do not wash 
one another's feet, although Christ apparently 
commands the practice as necessary for salva- 
tion? Christ said to Peter, " If I wash thee 
not, thou shalt have no part with me," and to 
all the Apostles, " You also ought to wash one 
another's feet." You administer infant bap- 
tism, and omit the other practice, because the 
Tradition of the Catholic Church has taught 
you, that the baptism of infants is necessary 

* See also, 1 Cor. xi. 2, 2 Thess. iii. 6, 2 Tim. i. 13 . ii. 2 j 
iii. 14. 

t 3 John, 13, 14. 



OF PROTESTANTIS^Vr. 171 

for their salvation, but the washing of one 
another's feet was not commanded as an in- 
dispensable rite. Relinquishing the letter of 
the Bible on these points, and throwing your- 
self back on Tradition, why do 3'ou maintain 
that the Bible is the only Rule of Faith ? 
Your practice, as well as your theory, is incon- 
sistent with itself. 

3. A Rule of Faith must be as old as the 
faith itself. But the Bible, by its own testi- 
mony, is not so old. Christ sent His Apostles 
to preach, not to write : " He that heareth you 
heareth me."* Their mission was symbolized 
by the fiery tongues under the appearance of 
which the Holy Ghost descended upon them. 
They did not leave us in the Bible any system 
of faith regularly and purposely drawn up. 
Not a word of the New Testament was written 
for seven years after the first preaching of the 
Gospel ; the last book was not in existence till 
the sixty-fourth year after the Ascension. 
There were false gospels circulated as well as 
true ones, and it was only in the fourth cen- 
tury, by the solemn definition of the first 
General Council, that it became authentically 
known what books were to be received as truly 

* Luke, X. 16. 



172 THE PBINCIPLE 

inspired. If the Bible is the Rule of Faith, 
then there was no faith for seven years after 
the Apostles had begun their mission, no faith 
during nearly the whole of the first century, 
none during the first three hundred years of 
the Christian era, for the Bible was not com- 
plete before the close of the first century, and 
not authentically known as inspired until the 
fourth. What cannot have been the Rule of 
Faith from the beginning, cannot be the Rule 
of Faith now, for no new Revelation has been 
made since the time of Christ. It was only 
after the period of the persecutions, when 
peace was given to the Church, that the canon 
of the genuine books of Scripture was drawn 
up by the Church assembled in General Coun- 
cil, at Nice, A.D. 325. Would you say that 
the exemplary Christians of the Apostolic age, 
the first fruits of Christianity, possessed only a 
fragmentary, uncertain Rule of Faith, or none 
at all ? If so, they were only imperfectly 
Christian, or not Christians at all. In the 
second century, St. Irenaeus, a disciple of St. 
Polycarp who had himself been a disciple of 
St. John the Apostle, informs us, that in his 
time there were whole nations who had never 
read a word of Holy Writ, and yet were excel- 
lent Christians. 



OF PROTESTANTISM. 173 

4. A Rule of Faith must be universal, for Christ 
revealed the faith for all men and for all time, 
and " without faith no one can be saved." 
Does the Bible possess the character of univer- 
sality ? Evidently not, for by far the greater 
portion of mankind cannot even read. How 
could any one ever attribute to the infinite 
wisdom of God a Rule of Faith, which, though 
necessary for salvation, is yet such that it is 
perfectly unavailable for the immense majority 
of men ? 

If the Scripture is the only Rule of Faith, and 
consequently necessary for salvation, it is not 
enough to read portions of the Bible : every 
one is obliged to read the whole of it, for other- 
wise he would be in manifest danger of over- 
looking many things that are essential for 
salvation. Do you pretend to say that every 
Protestant reads the whole Bible, or considers 
himself obliged to do so ? 

All men can hear the faith preached, but 
there never was a time when all could read. 
As certain as it is that Christ has revealed the 
faith for all mankind, and has commanded all 
to hear it ; as certain as it is that all cannot 
read, and that among those who can read, 
there are few who can read the Bible in the 
original languages in which it was written ; so 



174 THE PRINCIPLE 

certain it is, that the Bible is not the Rule of 
Faith. It is not the Rule of Faith for those 
who cannot read, simply because they are 
unable to read the Bible ; nor for those who 
cannot read it in the original Hebrew and 
Greek, because they can obtain no certainty 
that their translation is, in all respects, a faith- 
ful rendering of the original. 

You may allege that those who cannot read, 
may hear the Bible read by others. But every 
ignorant man has not the opportunity of hear- 
ing the Bible read, and, if he had, it would be 
unsatisfactory, for he would have to rely im- 
plicitly on the honesty of the reader ; he would 
be completely dependent for his. faith, not on 
an infallible authority, but on one who may 
imitate the example of Luther, and perhaps go 
so far as to interpolate the Bible to make it 
agree with his own private opinions. But sup- 
pose the readers as honest as you please, still the 
Bible cannot be the Rule of Faith for the ignor- 
ant; it is not the Rule of Faith even for the 
most enlightened. 

5. A Rule of Faith must be accessible to 
every one, but the Bible was not generally 
accessible before the fifteenth century. Until 
the middle of the fifteenth century, when the 
art of printing was invented, the seventy-five 



OF mOTESTANTIS^I. 175 

books of Scripture had to be copied with im- 
mense labor; complete copies of the Bible were 
so scarce, and the price of them so high, that 
only ecclesiastics and rich people could pro- 
cure them. Has Christ come only for ecclesi- 
astics and the rich? If the Bible is the Rule of 
Faith, hardly a single poor man for almost 
fifteen centuries could have been a Christian. 
Even at the present day, the Bible is not 
within the reach of every body. Dr. Ives, 
formerly an Episcopalian Bishop, now a fer- 
vent convert to the Catholic faith, has made 
the following striking and just remark: " Christ 
assures us that ' to the poor the Gospel is 
preached,' yet if the Bible is the Rule of Faith 
instituted by Christ, then the poor are in a 
worse condition than the rich." Your Bible 
Associations, intended to remedy the evil, sup- 
ply the proof of the assertion ; but for the press 
the Bible would still be a rare book. 

If your doctrine is true, Christ has not suffi- 
ciently provided for men's salvation. Alphonso 
of Arragon once had the audacity, in his philo- 
sophical pride, to utter the blasphemy that if 
he had been present at the creation of the 
world, he would have given God many a good 
advice. He had scarcely ended when a fear- 
ful thunderstorm arose ; vivid flashes of 



176 THE PRINCIPLE 

lightning struck nearer and nearer around the 
palace ; the king was terrified, and retracted 
his blasphemy. 

To maintain that the Bible is the Rule 
of Faith, is to hold, by implication, that 
God has failed to establish sufficient means 
of salvation ; it implies that He should 
have had recourse to the advice of men. 
Your principle when carried to its legitimate 
consequences, obliges you to say, that God 
should have given the Bible to men from the 
beginning, placed it within the reach of every 
man in every age, and made it so clear as to 
be easily intelligible to the meanest capacity, 
and incapable of being misunderstood by any. 
He should have bestowed on men the faculty 
of reading as well as that of hearing, and given 
them the press together with the Bible. 

But this, I presume, in your view as well as 
in ours, is blasphemy ; you disclaim it, and yet, 
if your principle is true, it is an inference 
which, it would appear, must be obvious to 
every reflecting mind. The principle itself, 
therefore, is untenable. God has no need of 
our advice. He has given us the Scripture as 
one of the channels of our faith, and as such it 
is a precious gift ; but not as a Rule of Faith, 
for it is evidently unfit for that purpose. The 



OF TROTESTANTISM. 177 

doctrine that the Bible is the Rule of Faith, 
contradicts the wisdom of God, as will become 
clearer still from the sixth characteristic which 
a Rule of Faith must possess. 

6. A Rule of Faith must be capable of set- 
tling every dispute that may arise upon any 
article of faith. The Bible cannot do this. It 
is not a book which is its own interpreter. 

What would you think of the plan of 
abolishing all courts of law, and substituting 
for them a law book, with the declaration that 
every one should read it to ascertain his rights, 
and that all disputes must be settled b}^ the 
private interpretation of the text. With such 
a plan no quarrel would ever end. And what, 
if the book, though written for the use of all, 
yet demanded great learning to be properly 
understood? What, if instead of being written 
in plain English, it was written in Hebrew and 
Greek ? The idea is ridiculous. It would be 
just as unwise on the part of God to have 
made the Bible the Rule of Faith for all nations, 
times, and tongues, as for a lawgiver to abolish 
all courts of justice, and substitute for them a 
code of laws written in a foreign tongue, 
lifou shrink with horror from the idea of attri- 
buting a want of wisdom to God, yet such is 
the logical inference from your doctrine tliat 
17 



178 THE PKINCIPLE 

the Bible, without any living judge to interpret 
it, is the Rule of Faith. 

What Goethe has said to ridicule quibbling 
trancendentalists, is applicable here. " Those 
speculators," he says, " are like animals led 
about by a wicked spirit in a sandy circle, 
while all around them there is a green 
meadow." Your Private Interpretation of the 
Bible leads you round in the arid wastes of 
fruitless speculation, while near you, full in 
view, God has placed the infallible authority of 
the Church that would lead you to the fields of 
life-giving truth contained in His written and 
unwritten Word. 

The Bible has not a single one of the 
characteristics of a Rule of Faith : your funda- 
mental principle must be rejected. As a 
channel of Divine Revelation, the Bible is a 
most precious gift of God ; as such it has 
always been recognized and used by the 
Catholic Church ; she has had no reason to 
reject or alter it. As such it bears witness to 
the validity of her claims : she has a right to 
address you in the words of Scripture, " Search 
the Scriptures : for you think in them to have 
life everlasting : and the same are they that 
render testimony of me." If you really believe 
that the Bible is the Word of God, search the 



OF PROTEST ANTISiM. 179 

Bible with candor, and you will become satis- 
fied that the Catholic Church is the only true 
Church of Christ; that she is the infallible 
interpreter of the Word of God, and that to her 
decisions you are bound in conscience to sub- 
mit. " If he will not hear the Church, let him 
be to thee as the heathen and the publican."* 
What Church does Christ mean? Evidently 
the Church which He built on Peter, " Thou 
art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my 
Church ; and the gates of hell shall not prevail 
against it."f That Church, as I have fully 
proved to you, is the Catholic Church alone. 
The Bible condemns your separation from her, 
denies that it is the Rule of Faith, and makes 
it a matter, not of choice, but of necessity, to 
hear the Church. Why then, do you remain 
out of the communion of the Catholic Church ? 
What hinders you from perceiving the wrongs 
which you have suffered at the hands of the 
Reformers . What prevents you from return- 
ing to the Church from which you were sepa- 
rated by the blind fury of passion and 
despotism ? 

The first reason that keeps you out of the 
Catholic Church, is a lack of earnest examina- 

* Matt., xviii. 17. 
t Matt., XYi. 18. 



180 THE PRINCIPLE OF PROTESTANTISM. 

tion, especially in regard to the principle of 
faith : I have therefore given you the refuta- 
tion of the Protestant principle of faith, and 
the proofs of the Divine character of the 
Catholic Church and of her Infallibility in 
matters of faith. Have you earnestly exa- 
mined my proofs? Another reason is preju- 
dice : I will proceed to show you, as briefly and 
clearly as possible, that all your objections are 
unfounded, and that instead of truth you 
believe calumnies. 



CHAPTER III. 

PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 



If all that you have ever heard and read 
against the Catholic Church, against her faith, 
her Popes, Bishops, and Priests, were true, you 
would have a good reason for your separation. 
But you believe calumnies ; and where is the 
fault to be sought for? Not in the Catholic 
Church, but in your adopting without examina- 
tion almost any charge brought against us. 
From your earliest infancy you have heard fab- 
ulous accounts of Catholic faith and practice ; 
)' ou learned to lisp them on your mothers' lap ; 
your hair has grown gray, you have reached 
the brink of the grave, in the firm belief of 

181 



182 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

imputations as groundless as they are enor- 
mous. Millions of Protestants carry their anti- 
Catholic prejudices to the tomb. The power 
of preconceived opinions is so great, that it 
often prevents men of the highest intelligence 
and education from perceiving the most obvious 
truths. Did you ever reflect on the astonishing 
effect of prejudices ? They may be trifling in 
themselves, but their power to impede the per- 
ception of truth is enormous. Numberless 
illustrations of this fact occur in familiar 
objects. 

A piece of worthless cloth placed before the 
window darkens the room at midday ; a cloud 
obscures the light of the sun ; a beam thrown 
across the railtrack hurls the train down the 
embankment ; a little dust blinds the eye of 
the eagle. It is so with prejudice. If a man 
is under the influence of prejudice, you may 
reason with him as much as you please, you 
labor in vain. For him the clearest light is 
darkness ; logic only serves to drive him more 
deeply into error. 

Of the effect of prejudice, where it exists, 
there can be no douht ; but with regard to the 
origin and continuance of the prejudices against 
the Catholic Church, I do not know which is 
more surprising, the effrontery of those who 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 183 

invented and spread the calumnies, or the 
narrowness of mind which has believed and 
transmitted them for centuries without inquiry. 
Did I not know it from personal experience, I 
could hardly have credited that such ideas as 
actually exist about Catholics and their Church, 
could ever have been accepted or invented. 

I have met with a respectable, well-educated 
Protestant lady who confessed to me, that for 
many years she had entertained the idea that 
Catholics had goats' feet. The first time she 
saw a Catholic, she instinctively looked at his 
feet, to see whether they w^ere human or not. 

On the other hand, while it is undeniable 
that there are Protestant writers and speakers 
guilty of maliciously spreading the most 
absurd and atrocious calumnies against us ; 
the candor, the perfect fairness and honesty 
with which Catholics universally treat Pro- 
testant doctrines, cannot fail to exert on your 
minds a powerful influence in favor of the 
Catholic faith. You cannot cite a single 
instance of a Catholic writer misrepresenting 
your opinions ; there never was an instance of 
it. Yet there is hardl}" a Catholic doctrine 
which has not been distorted, presented under 
an aspect which we abhor as much as you do, 
or replaced by some monstrous tenet never 



181 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

dreamed of in the Catholic Church. In review- 
ing the popular prejudices against the Catholic 
Church, I shall have occasion to give you many 
t^triking proofs of this fact ; but before pro- 
ceeding further, I must quote an extract from 
an able article in a Catholic paper, The 
Toronto Freeman : 

" Whilst Protestants reject the unwritten 
word of God, as of no authority, — whilst they 
boast that they build their faith on the written 
Word alone, and condemn only what it con- 
demns — they yet are the victims of a hateful 
tradition, that is at variance with the first prin- 
ciples of Christianity. This great Protestant 
tradition consists in misrepresenting Catholic 
doctrines, and in imputing to the Church acts 
and teachings that she abhors. With the great 
mass of non-Catholics, this tradition is of equal 
authority with the Bible, and is far more effica- 
cious in chaining them to their errors and 
delusions. It is necessary for the very existence 
of Protestantism. 'Truth,' says Milton, 'is 
powerful next to the Almighty,' and error is 
impotent in its presence. Truth has a charm 
for the mind of man, — it is its life, its food, and 
it attracts the soul towards it as the north the 
mariner's needle. Error, therefore, to subsist 
at all, must not cope with truth, as such,-— it 



TKOTESTANT PRFJUDTCES. 185 

must, by the very instinct of self-preservation, 
be dim, and hide the bright radiance of truth 
beneath the dark cloak of calumny — it must 
misrepresent — it must distort and disfigure it — 
it must cover its fair face with a hideous mask, 
and thus frighten men from its contemplation. 
Protestantism has been true to this instinct of 
self-preservation. Since the day it burst forth, 
like an impure stream, from the corrupt hearts 
of the so-called Reformers, it has lived on 
calumny and misrepresentation. Truth could 
not answer its purposes — because truth would 
be its condemnation ; it has, therefore, had 
recourse to slander, in all its contests with the 
Church. ' The Pope,' it cries, ' is anti-Christ. 
Papists adore images, and give divine honor to 
Saints and Angels. They are benighted and 
priest-ridden. The Priests give license to 
commit sin ; nay, they even give permission 
to murder the enemies of the Church. The 
Church of Rome is the enemy of the Word of 
God — she chains the intellect and enslaves the 
soul.' These are but the beginning of the long 
litany of lying accusations made by Protestant- 
ism against the Church. They constitute the 
burden of many a long-winded oration, in 
pulpits and on platforms ; and many a time 
the white of an eye is turned heavenward at 



186 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

the recital of the abominations of Popery. But 
this huge swindle on men's minds is beginning 
to be exploded. Men at length dare to dis- 
believe the great Protestant tradition. Noble 
minds are rising above the level of vulgar pre- 
judice, and are daily won to the Church, after 
a strict investigation into her title-deeds. Two 
works have been written by recent converts — 
men of mind and of position in society — and 
men, besides, who could have no worldly inte- 
rest as the motive of their conversion. The 
author of ' The Path which led a Protestant 
Lawyer to the Church,' — Peter H. Burnett — 
examined into the real doctrines of the Church, 
and was startled at finding himself to have 
been so long the victim of wicked misrepre- 
sentation. Hear what the learned author says 
on the matter : ' This system.' he says, page 
700, ' of misrepresentation of Catholic doctrines, 
practices, and intentions, so general among 
Protestant writers, gave rise, in my mind, to 
very serious questions. Why did success ori- 
ginally require such a line of argument ? Wh}'' 
did truth require such a support? Why was 
such a course preferred, in support of an 
alleged true system ? And why is it still 
necessary ? Are bad arguments more effective 
than good ? Is misrepresentation better, in a 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 18T 

good cause, than candor and truth? If the 
doctrines really held by Catholics were so 
false, erroneous, and absurd, did they need 
exaggeration, to cause their rejection? Does 
the grossest error, or error of any kind, require 
to be darkened beyond its real demerits, to 
make it hated and despised ? And ie it neces- 
sary to prepare the human mind for the recep- 
tion of truth, that it should first be filled with 
falsehood ? Do you sow weeds before you sow 
good grain ? Is it necessary in order to incul- 
cate charity, that 3'ou should first give a proof 
of its absence in the party who inculcates it ? 
And if you wish to put down falsehood, is it 
necessary, by your own act, to show its utility 
and necessity ? True, it is a practical rule with 
too many, to use falsehood against alleged 
falsehood, according to the common maxim, 
that you must oppose the devil with fire. But 
is this Christianity ? is it true philosophy ? On 
the contrary, is it not the doctrine of revenge ? 
the practice of savages ? the chief maxim of 
morality among wolves and tigers ? And if 
you wish to vanquish the evil spirit and his bad 
cause, had you not better fight him with some- 
thing the opposite of that which he uses him- 
self? Had you not better oppose evil with 
good ? But does not the necessity arise from 



188 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

other causes ? Is it because there is a unity — 
a force — a beauty in the Catholic system, that 
renders it logically impregnable ? Is it because 
it is conformable to the truth of Christianity, 
JUST AS IT IS, and not as the passions, interests, 
and pride of men would make it, that the 
Catholic theory is so much misrepresented and 
despised ? Why is it that every proud innova- 
tor upon a permanent system — every wild 
fanatic — every demagogue in religion — every 
sect, and the broken fragments of every sect, 
from Simon Magus to the present time, have 
one and all been down upon the Church ?' 

" In the preface to his elaborate and well- 
reasoned essay, ' On the Harmonious Relations 
between Divine Faith and Natural Religion,' 
Judge Baine — a distinguished convert of Stock- 
ton, California — thus discourses of the injustice 
of that system of misrepresentation of which 
we have been speaking : — "It is a principle of 
universal jurisprudence, that no man, not even 
the most lowly culprit, shall be condemned 
unheard, no matter how fierce his accusers may 
be, and no matter how terrible the crimes they 
may lay to his charge. The judge who would 
condemn a man upon mere clamor, without 
any investigation into the actual conduct of the 
person accused, would be considered both cruel 



i PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 189 

and unjust. And the Church 'feels most pro- 
foundly and earnestly insists that whoever 
denounces her teaching, without learning from 
her own standard of faith exactly what she does 
teach as Divine faith, is at once unjust to her 
and to his own intellect and soul.' Alluding to 
that oft-repeated calumny, that the Church 
cramps the intellect and enslaves the body, he 
says : — ' It has been the accusation of ages 
against the Church, that she usurps the pro- 
vinces of reason, common sense, and experi- 
ence, in teaching Divine faith to her children ; 
and millions upon millions of men have 
accepted the accusation as true, without ever 
having seen one of her catechisms, or any 
standard of her faith, written by one of her 
recognized teachers. Indeed, her accusers 
doom her to their hate even without consulting 
her theologians and historians — so that they 
are ignorant of both her faith and her theolog}'. 
And I respectfully appeal to any one who now 
condemns her, whether they do so because they 
have read and understood the teaching of her 
authorized doctors ; or whether they do it upon 
the historical assertions of her enemies, and 
their denunciations of her faith.' " 

I w^ill now rapidly glance at the most com- 
mon American prejudices against the Catholic 



190 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

Church. They may be divided into religious 
and political prejudices, or prejudices of Ameri- 
cans as Protestants, and their prejudices ^s 
Citizens. In refuting your prejudices, I will 
occasionally refer to remarks which I made in 
the first chapter, when I considered the conso- 
lations of Catholic doctrines as compared with 
the distressing nature of Protestant tenets ; I 
shall be obliged to reiterate some of those 
observations, in order to correct the erroneous 
views which many of you entertain respecting 
Catholic belief and practice. 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 191 



SECTION I. 



RELiaiOUS PREJUDICES, 



THE POPE. 

You have been taught that Catholics are 
obliged by their faith to believe as infallible 
truth whatever the Pope says, and to execute 
whatever he commands. This idea is false ; it 
is an utterly unfounded prejudice. The genuine 
Catholic doctrine is, that the Church, with the 
Pope, is infallible in matters of faith onl}^, and 
only when she solemnly defines an article of 
faith. When the Pope writes or speaks as a 
private doctor, he is liable to error ; but when 
in his official capacity, as Head of the whole 
Church, he defines an article of faith, we hold 



192 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

him to be infallible. This doctrine is based on 
the solemn promise of Christ to Peter, " I have 
prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not : and 
thou being once converted confirm thy 
brethren,"* and other similar promises of 
Christ, made to Peter as Head of the Church, 
and through him to his successors : the texts 
have been repeatedly cited in the preceding 
pages. As we have seen, the very idea of the 
Church founded by Christ to be the religious 
guide and instructor of man to the end of time, 
involves the necessity of an infallible authority 
in the Head of the Church to settle contro- 
verted points of doctrine. 

To illustrate our doctrine, I may repeat a 
remark of Count de Maistre, in his w^ork 
entitled Du Pape : — " Civil society," he says, 
" is forced to set up a tribunal infallible de 
facto, for the pteservation of social order." In 
America you have the Supreme Court of the 
United States, established as a final tribunal, 
from whose decision there lies no appeal. Its 
decisions, therefore, are adopted as infallible 
de facto. Such an institution is absolutely 
necessary, for otherwise there never would be 
an end to litigation. Its infallibility is only a 
legal and political fiction, indispensable to the 

* Luke, xxii. 32, 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 193 

preservation of the public peace or the union 
of States. In the Church, the infallibility of 
the supreme tribunal, in matters of faith, is not 
a fiction, but from the very nature of the case 
must be an infallible truth, for the true Church 
of Christ, as I have shown, cannot change, and 
error in the faith would be an essential change. 

The Church of Christ is the Kingdom of 
Truth. When Pilate asked Jesus, " Art thou 
a King, then ? Jesus answered : Thou sayest 
that I am a King. For this was I born, and 
for this came I into the world ; that I should 
give testimony to the truth : every one that is 
of the truth heareth my voice."* 

I do not understand how you can make any 
objection to the doctrine of Papal Infallibility, 
while, in the political and civil order, you are 
forced, and all nations are forced, to adopt an 
infallibility de facto in the Supreme Court. The 
infallibility of the Church has reference to 
objects of infinitely higher moment : it gives 
us securit}'^ in our eternal interests. 

Though the official infallibility of the Pope, 
is clearly deducible from the Scripture, and 
follows from the decisions of General Councils, 
and is moreover irresistibly proved by logical 



* John, xviii. 37. 

18 



194 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

inference, yet it must be observed that it has 
never been defined as an article of Catholic 
Faith, and consequently no one becomes a 
heretic, in this respect, unless he denies the 
infallibility of the whole Church in union with 
the Pope. 



THE CLERaY. 

You have been taught that Catholic Priests 
perform their sacred functions for money, make 
a traffic of Confession and Absolution, and sell 
the permission to commit sin. All this is a 
calumny. It is true that on occasion of mar- 
riages, baptisms, funerals, and when a Mass is 
asked to be oflered for a particular intention, 
it is usual for Catholics to give a gratuity to 
their Pastors ; the sum is commonly very 
small, and it is neither offered nor accepted as 
an exchange for spirituals, but as a contribu- 
tion for the support of the Pastor. 

It was enjoined in the Old Law, and St. 
Paul repeats the injunction, " that they who 
work in the holy place, eat the things that are 
of the holy place: and they who serve at the 
altar, partake of the altar. So also the Lord 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 195 

ordained that they who preach the gospel, 
should live of the gospel."* It is but just that 
the people should contribute for the support of 
the Priest, who, if he had not chosen the minis- 
try, would, in most cases, have been better 
able to provide for himself in some other pro- 
fession. The Jews were obliged to give the 
tenth part of their income to the Temple : if 
Catholics, of their own accord, paid tithes in 
this sense, they would only do what the Old 
Law enjoined on the Jews ; but there is not a 
single Catholic congregation which contributes 
to that extent, or from which so much is demanded 
or expected. Priests, especially in this country, 
are scantily and often miserably provided for ; 
their privations here are so great, in most 
cases, that this may be assigned as one of the 
reasons why there are comparatively few 
native Americans among the Catholic Priest- 
hood. 

When you accuse Catholic Priests of a 
money-making spirit, might not the reproach 
be turned against Protestant ministers ? I am 
unwilling to recriminate, but I must ask you, 
Which are better provided for. Catholic priests 
or Protestant ministers ? I need not give the 

* 1 Cor., ix. 13, 14. 



196 .PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

answer. If you look back to your mother 
country, England, you will see a still more 
striking contrast. The immense wealth of the 
High Church is universally known. That 
wealth, while it was in the hands of the Catho- 
lic clergy, served to provide for the wants ot 
the needy : is it so at the present day ? Read 
Cobbett's " History of the Reformation," and 
j'-ou will never again reproach the Catholic 
clergy with a money-seeking spirit. 

The Church obliges no one to pay for the 
administration of the Sacraments. As is done 
among you. Catholics on occasion of Baptism 
contribute for the support of the Pastor, but 
they are not obliged to do so on that occasion ; 
they may do it at any other time at their con- 
venience. But no money is ever received for 
Confessions : all you hear on that subject 
against us is a calumny. Unfortunately the 
calumny is very common. 

In 1859, 1 was traveling through the State of 
Mississippi in the cars. The railroad to New 
Orleans was not yet completed : so one even- 
ing we were forced to wait, in the middle of 
the woods, for stage-coaches to convey us to 
the next terminus. I hired a man to accom- 
pany me to the nearest hotel. While passing 
over a log thrown across a deep trench, the 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 197 

man looked back at me and asked, " Who are 
you, sir?" " 1 am a Catholic Priest." "A 
Catholic Priest !" he exclaimed in a tone of 
voice that denoted intense hatred, and with an 
air of contempt and abhorrence, " I hate Catho- 
lic Priests." My situation in thatlonety place, 
in the presence of a stout man and bitter 
enemy, was by no means pleasant. I replied 
calmly, " If all that you have heard about 
Catholic Priests were true, I should hate them 
more than you do. But believe me, it is all 
prejudice and calumny." " Why," said he, in 
a rage, " don't you Priests forgive sins for 
money ?" " Friend, look at me, and see 
whether I am sincere. I was a Priest before 
you were born, and have heard many a 
hundred thousand Confessions ; and I now 
declare before God, that I have never in my 
whole life received a cent for all the Confes- 
sions I have heard in Europe or America." 
My answer satisfied him ; he became calm and 
polite, and asked me many questions about the 
Catholic religion. On arriving at the hotel, I 
paid him liberally for his services. After 
supper I had a remarkable proof of his extra- 
ordinary change of sentiments towards Catholic 
Priests. Entering the parlor, where a large 
number of gentlemen were assembled, he asked 



198 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

them in a solemn tone of voice, " Gentlemen, 
do you believe there is a true Christian on 
earth ?" The company burst out into a laugh ; 
some asked him, " Do you think yourself that 
one true Christian?" Pointing me out, he 
said, " I think, if there is a true Christian on 
earth, it is that Priest." So quickly had his 
hatred been changed into an exaggerated 
aftection. 

If Americans in general would take the 
trouble of conversing v^^ith Catholic Priests, or 
reading our books, their anti-Catholic prejudices 
would at once vanish, and their aversion 
change into aiFection. 



coNFEssioi;r. 

You have been taught that Confession is an 
invention of the Priesthood, and that the 
primitive Christians never heard of such an 
institution. This is an error. Confession and 
the duty of confessing are as old as the words 
of Christ, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost : whose 
sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them ; 
and whose you shall retain, they are retained."* 

* John, XX. 22, 23. 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 199 

How could the Apostles have discharged the 
duty of forgiving or retaining sins, if the early 
Christians were not obliged to confess their 
sins? The Apostles were not omniscient, and 
their authority of forgiving or retaining sins 
could not be exercised, unless the faithful 
declared their hidden offences. 

If Christ had merely said, " Whose sins you 
shall forgive, they are forgiven," the case would 
have been different : the Apostles and priests 
of the Church could then have forgiven sin 
without confession ; but Christ added, " Whose 
sins you shall retain, they are retained." The 
power conferred is a discretionary power; 
neither Priest nor Apostle could ever have 
exercised it prudently or justly, except upon an 
accurate knowledge of the conscience of the 
penitent : absolution or denial of absolution 
must necessarily, from the nature of the case, 
depend upon the avowal of the penitent, for he 
alone can make the state of his conscience 
accuratel}'^ known. To apply these words of 
our Lord to the preaching of the Gospel in order 
to move men to Contrition, is utterly ridicul- 
ous, for, what would then be the meaning of 
the words, " whose sins you shall retain, they 
are retained ?" 

If you insist that Confession is an invention 



200 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

of the Priests, you must be able to assign the 
date when it was first introduced, and the 
name of the inventor. This you can never do. 
The most ancient among the Fathers of the 
Church speak of Confession as an institution 
that had existed from the beginning of Christi- 
anity. Tertullian, who lived in the second 
century of our era, speaks of Confession as 
clearly as we do at the present day. In his 
work " De PcBuitentia^'' he says, " I think there 
are some who shun this [Confession], as an 
exposure of themselves, or put it off from day 
to day, thinking more of the shame than of 
their cure ; like those who, affected with some 
disease, conceal it from the physician, and 
perish through shame."* St. Irenaeus, St. 
Cyprian, Origen, and many more of the most 
ancient Fathers, speak of Confession in the 
same explicit manner. St. Clement of Rome, 
a cotemporar}^ of St. John the Apostle, urges 
the faithful to confess their sins to the Priests, 
in order to be reconciled to God through their 
means. 

If Confession were an invention of the Priests, 
they would not have imposed the obligation of 
Confession upon themselves, but only on the 
laity ; the law, however, is general, binding as 

* De Psenit., ix. x. 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 201 

well on Priests, Bishops, and the Pope, as on 
laymen. All are equally obliged to confess 
their sins. 

If Confession has not come down from the 
Apostles, the innovation, like all heresies, must 
have left a distinct mark in history ; a universal 
outcry must have been raised against the bold 
innovator who first attempted to oblige the 
whole of Christendom, including the Pope him- 
self, to confess their most secret offences to a 
man like themselves. 

In 1856. on board a steamboat on Lake 
Michigan, a Methodist preacher asked me, 
" Are you a Catholic Priest ?" " Yes, sir, I 
am?" "May I ask j^ou a question?" "Cer- 
tainly." " Does the Pope go to Confession ?" 
" Of course he does, for if he were not 
obliged to do it, no one would be. The Pope 
as a man is liable to fall. Christ did not 
institute a Church for him different from the 
one of which he is the head." " To whom 
does he confess ? Does he confess to the 
Lord Jesus Christ?" continued the astonished 
preacher. " No, sir, he confesses to a Priest, 
and he might confess to me." " I never heard 
that before," exclaimed the preacher, with 
increasing wonder, " I wish, sir, you would 

ask me some more questions about the Catho- 
19 



202 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

lie Church, for there are many other things, I 
am sure, which you have never heard." This 
first discovery, however, was too much for him ; 
he had not the courage to proceed. 

There are but too many Protestants who act 
in the same way ; the want of earnest investi- 
gation is the great evil. Many ask, like 
Pilate, " What is the truth ?" but turn their 
back without waiting for an answer, and live 
and die in their erroneous religious opinions 
and prejudices. Some, I doubt not, who will 
take up this short work of mine, will throw it 
aside after having read a few pages : if such 
men remain in error it is their own fault ; they 
are evidently unwilling to know the truth. 

You have always thought that Confession is 
an intolerable burden. I have shown you in 
another portion of this book, that Confession is, 
in reality, a source of consolation, peace, light, 
and strength ; I need not repeat the remarks I 
have already made, and, indeed, if you wish to 
be convinced of the truth of my assertion, you 
need only ask any devout Catholic, and you 
will find that I have but stated the universal 
experience of all who have ever made a good 
confession. 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 203 



INDULGENCES. '^ 

You have been taught, and many among 
you believe, that an Indulgence means a license 
to commit sin, and is granted for money by the 
Priests to any Catholic who applies for it. 
This is a malicious calumny. As every Catho- 
lic child and every Catholic Catechism could 
inform you, and as I remarked in speaking of 
this subject before, an Indulgence has nothing 
at all to do v^^ith the remission of sins ; an 
Indulgence is nothing more than a remission 
of temporal punishments remaining due to sin 
after absolution. It presupposes contrition, 
penance, the pardon of sin, and a heart free 
from all deliberate attachment to sin. Indeed, 
an Indulgence with permission to commit sin is 
a most glaring contradiction, although you 
take the two expressions to be synonymous, 
and imagine the Catholic Church teaches your 
opinion. 

I might retort with truth that the original 
Protestant doctrine of saving faith, the doctrine 
that we are saved by faith alone, in spite of 
sin, and without repentance, is, indeed, a per- 
mission to commit sin, of which Luther's 



204 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

scandalous advice is only a legitimate deduc- 
tion, — " Sin, but believe all the more firmly." 



THE BIBLE. 

You have been taught that the Catholic 
Church is hostile to the Bible. It is a calumny. 
I have already reminded you of the great 
solicitude of the Catholic Church for preserving 
the Bible, before the invention of the art of 
printing. But for the Catholic monks, v^^hose 
labors transmitted manuscript copies of it from 
age to age, whsit would have become of the 
New Testament ? ' I have also shown you, that 
but for the infallible testimony of the Catholic 
Church you would not know that the Bible is 
the Bible ; that she can have no reason to be 
unfavorable to the Bible, since her own autho- 
rity is proved by it, even without considering it 
as inspired, and only regarding it as authentic 
history. 

The Church, you insist, does not allow the 
free use of the Bible ; but this, also, as urged 
by Protestants, is a calumny. Here is the true 
statement of the case. The Catholic Church 
places some restraint on the indiscriminate 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES 205 

reading of the Bible in the modern tongues, 
and does not generally allow it, unless the trans- 
lation is accompanied by authorized notes 
explanatory of obscure or difficult passages. 
In so doing she acts with wisdom, for it is clear 
from all past experience that misinterpretation 
of the Bible may lead to the most terrific con- 
sequences, subverting faith, moralit}^, and 
public order. But to say that the Catholic 
Church puts any obstacle to the reading of the 
Bible with authorized explanatory notes, and 
by those who can derive profit from it, is a 
most injurious calumny. You have an obvious 
refutation of it in the well-known fact, that, 
long before Luther was born, the Bible was 
translated into German, French, Italian, Span- 
ish, Bohemian, and other languages. The 
German translation of Augsburg had gone 
through eight editions, and the Italian by 
Malermi, through twenty-three. These trans- 
lations were made for the people, and bought 
and read by the people. 

The Catholic Church has never prevented 
the reading, but only the unprofitable and 
unguarded reading of the Bible, and in doing 
so, she is true to her high mission as the true 
Church of Christ, the guardian of faith and 
morality, the religious guide of men appointed 



206 PROTESTANT PREJUDrCES. 

by Divine Wisdom. Her precautionary mea- 
sures are a proof of her reverence for the Word 
of God, while Protestantism, urging the reading 
of the Bible, without note or comment, without 
regard to capacity or prudence, shows rather a 
want of respect for the sacred volume. The 
conduct of the Church is not new. Fourteen 
or fifteen centuries ago, in the age when the 
canon of Scripture was first framed, St. Jerome 
inveighed in very energetic language against 
the pretension that every one is a fit interpreter 
of the Bible.* " Mind your sauce," said St. 
Basil to the imperial cook, " the Bible is above 
the dresser." 



SAINTS. 

You have been taught from your earliest 
childhood, that Catholics adore Saints and 
images. It is a calumnj'', destitute of all 
foundation in truth. Ask the first Catholic 
child you meet, and you will learn that Catho- 
lics adore God alone. Here is a brief outline 
of the Catholic doctrine. 

We honor the Saints just as we honor living 
men of distinguished virtue ; we revere them 
for their virtues. The honor we render them 

* See a passage cited above. 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 207 

is no doubt greater than any we give to 
living men, but it is of the same kind, and 
only greater in degree, because the Saints 
have persevered in virtue, and are in the 
enjoyment of their reward. St. Augustine, in 
the early ages of the Church, explained the 
doctrine just as we do now ; among other 
passages, the following occurs in the twentieth 
book of his work against Faustus the Mani- 
chean : " We honor the martyrs with that 
honor of charity and fellowship, with which 
even in this life we honor the holy servants of 
God whose hearts we find ready to undergo 
the same sufferings for evangelic truth. But 
we honor them with greater devotion, because 
they are safer, having conquered in the strife. 
. . . But with that worship, which is called 
adoration^ we neither honor, nor teach any man 
to honor any one but God alone."* Is this 
doctrine, in any respect, exceptionable ? 

We ask the Saints to intercede for us with 
God ; but do you not ask one another's prayers 
on earth ? Did not the Apostles ask the faith- 
ful to pray for them ? Why, then, should we 
not have recourse to the Saints in Heaven, who 
are so much nearer to God ? Your objections 

* St, Aug. contra Faust. Manieh. 1. xx. n. xxi. 



2Q8 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

were answered many centuries ago, by St. 
Jerome, in his short treatise against Vigilan- 
tius : " If the Apostles and Martyrs could pray 
for others, while they were still living in the 
flesh, while they were still obliged to be solicit- 
ous for themselves ; how much more can they 
do so, after having gained the crown, the 
victory, the triumph ! . . . Have they less 
power, as soon as they begin to be with 
Christ ?" 

You have been taught that the intercession 
of the Saints would be an injury offered to 
Christ. It is the very reverse. We honor the 
Saints for the sake of Christ, through whose 
grace they became holy, we ask their prayers 
in view of the merits of Christ, through whom 
they intercede for us, and whose merits alone 
can make their intercession efficacious. " We 
honor the servants." says St. Augustine, in a 
letter to Riparius, " in order that the honor 
may return to the Lord." 

This holy bond of mutual love, by which 
Christ has united the members of His Church, 
is a powerful means of sanctification for men, 
for the veneration and intercession of Saints 
constantly serve to recall to their minds 
examples of heroic holiness, and urge them on 
to the practice of virtue. 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 209 

Look at a well-educated family ; do you not 
consider it a beautiful evidence of mutual 
affection in children, when each is ready to 
ask a favor for the other ? Do you not prefer 
such a family to those in which one child 
roughly says to the other, Go, and ask for 
yourself? Parents, you who can feel the 
warmth and tenderness, the beautiful love of 
children, I leave it to you to make the appli- 
cation. The Church teaches nothing more in 
regard to the intercession of Saints, than you 
daily witness in your families. We are the 
family of God ; Christ is our Head, the first- 
born of God, our eldest brother, through whom 
alone each and all of us, saints and sinners, 
can gain access to the mercy of God. Every 
one, if he chooses, may address his prayers 
directly to Christ, and through Christ to the 
Father : the Church only teaches that the 
intercession of Saints, if rightly understood and 
practiced properly, is lawful, praiseworthy, and 
beneficial. 

We honor the images of Saints. You have 
been taught that we adore them. It is a 
malignant slander. We honor the images of 
Saints, as you honor the statues and pictures 
of your parents or of the great benefactors of 
the nation or of mankind. The nature of our 



210 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

veneration for the images of Saints was 
solemnly declared by the whole Church as 
early as the first General Council, held at Nice 
in the year 325. " The respect which we show 
to images," says that Council, "passes to the 
object of which they are representations." 
We do not adore Saints, neither do we adore 
their images. 

You have been told that our practice is con- 
trary to the first commandment, " Thou shalt 
not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the 
likeness of anything. . . . Thou shalt not 
adore them, nor serve them." I am astonished 
that this text should ever have been quoted 
against us ; it is a clear proof of insincerity, 
and hatred of the truth, at least in those who 
first brought it forward in proof against the 
veneration of images. The text limits its own 
meaning : " Thou shalt not adore them, nor 
serve them." Do Catholics adore, do they 
serve images ? They do not. To honor images 
as we do, to keep them in our houses and 
churches, is not to adore them. You cannot 
condemn us. unless you are willing to condemn 
God, for God ordered two cherubs to be placed 
in the Temple upon the ark. If the text is to 
be understood without limitation, then it con- 
demns as idolatrous the making of all pictures 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 211 

and statues; then painters and sculptors are 
idolaters ; then all are idolaters who have a 
statue or a painting of a parent, friend, or 
illustrious man in their houses. Nothing more 
is needed to show that many Protestants are 
not sincere in their accusations, than the charge 
of idolatry which they bring against us : this 
puts the malignity of their calumnies in a 
glaring light. The accusation is not new ; it 
was made in early times by Vigilantius, who 
condemned the veneration of images as you 
do. St. Jerome met the calumny with indig- 
nation.* What would St. Jerome and the 
early Fathers say, were they to return amongst 
us now, when, in spite of all the works pub- 
lished in explanation of the Catholic doctrine, 
the old accusation is constantly renewed, as if 
it had never been refuted? The school-house, 
the pulpit, and the press conspire to perpetuate 
the atrocious slander. 

I ask yoa, honest and candid Americans, is 
it Christian or manly to inculcate such false- 
hoods into the minds of unsuspecting youth, to 
repeat them continually before ignorant multi- 
tudes, to utter them in the presence of God in 
your religious assemblies, and that, too, with 
the full consciousness of calumny? If you 

* See St. Jerome's Letter and Treatise against Vigilantiu.g. 



212 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

think we are in error, meet us fairly; refute what 
we really teach ; do not object against us what 
we condemn and abhor as much as you do. 



MARY. 

Protestant misrepresentation is particularly 
directed against our veneration of the Blessed 
Virgin Mary the Mother of God. You have 
been taught that we adore her. It is an 
unfounded calumny, like the rest. Our doc- 
trine to-day is what it was in the beginning of 
Christianity, and has been in all ages since ; 
we teach to-day what St. Epiphanius taught in 
opposition to the heretics of the fourth century, 
" We honor Mary ; but the Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost alone, we adore."* 

You will urge, perhaps, that we have greater 
confidence in Mary than in Jesus Christ. This, 
also, is a calumny. We hold that whatever 
power the intercession of Mary possesses with 
God, is derived solely from the merits of Jesus 
Christ : her prayers, like those of other Saints, 
have all their efficacy from Him and through 
Him. 

* Epiph. Hseres. 79. 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 213 

You have been told that by the doctrine of 
the Immaculate Conception we mean that Mary, 
like Jesus, was conceived of the Holy Ghost. 
This is simply absurd ; and manifests an 
evident lack of good faith or information. 
Although Pius IX. proclaimed the Catholic 
doctrine solemnly and in open day, in the 
presence of two hundred Catholic Bishops 
assembled from every quarter of the globe ; 
though the very words of the Pope were pub- 
lished in every Catholic journal in the country, 
yet the doctrine was instantly misrepresented. 
The Pope defined that it was a revealed truth 
that Mary had been conceived without incur- 
ring original sin, that is to say, that she was 
not at any moment defiled by the sin of our 
first parents. But the Protestant press and 
Protestant ministers throughout the whole 
world, represented the Pope as having defined 
that Mary was not conceived of man, but by 
the Holy Ghost. I need not give you a clearer 
proof of the reckless disposition to calumniate 
us, prevalent among the leaders of Protest- 
antism. 

We hold that Mary was exempt from original 
sin, because it was not becoming that the Son 
of God should be born of one who had ever 
been subject to the curse of sin and under the 



214 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

power of the arch-enemy of God. The doctrine 
is obviously in perfect accordance with reason. 

Many Protestants take delight in trying to 
lessen the dignity of the Mother of God ; their 
practice is a consequence of Protestant doctrine 
and furnishes another proof of its inconsistency 
They adore the Son, and despise the Mother : 
can human conduct be more inconsistent ? 
Christ has said of those who despise Him, " He 
that despiseth me, despiseth Him who sent me ;" 
so we may justly say of such as despise Mar}^, 
He who does not honor the Mother, does not 
honor the Son. Remember the prophecy of 
Simeon, " Thy soul a sword shall pierce, that 
out of many hearts thoughts may be revealed." 
The disregard and contempt of Protestantism 
for Mary, its efforts to impair her glory, and 
bring her down to a level with ordinary" women, 
all this reveals its secret tendencies, and dis- 
closes its unchristian character. There are 
candid men among Protestants, who acknow- 
ledge this. 

In Minnesota, on the borders of the Sioux 
territory, I met with a French cavalry officer, 
who, at the time when I passed through Paris 
on my way to America, was engaged in the 
revolutionary street fights in that city. A 
Protestant by birth, he had married a Catholic 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 215 

lady, by whom he had three children, all of 
whom were brought up in the Catholic faith. He 
was himself a Catholic at heart. In the course 
of our conversation, he made the following 
remark : " What pleases me most in Catholics 
is that they honor Mary with so much devotion 
and tenderness. I was born a Protestant, but 
I like to hear my wife and children pray, ' Holy 
Mary, Mother of God, pray for us, now and at 
the hour of our death.' Hear what happened 
to me at Paris. It was during the Workmen's 
Revolution in 1848. General Bugeau rode up 
to my house, and exclaimed, ' To the barri- 
cades.' I hastily made my will, embraced my 
wife and children, and rode out against the 
rebels. The struggle was fearful. I had gone 
through many battles in Algiers, but the worst 
of them were not to be compared with this. 
In the midst of the hail of bullets, I thought of 
the prayer of my children, and on horseback, in 
the midst of the tumult, I prayed in my heart. 
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for me. In 
the hottest of the fire, I did not receive the 
slightest wound ." 

Luther rejected the veneration of Mary. He 
seemed to be ashamed of the salutation of the 
Angel, " Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with 



216 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

thee : Blessed are thou among women ;"* and 
of the inspired words of Elizabeth, " Blessed 
art thou among women ; and blessed is the 
fruit of thy womb ;"t and of Mary's inspired 
prophecy, " Behold, from henceforth all gener- 
ations shall call me blessed /'J Luther has 
forbidden you to call Mary blessed ; he has 
torn you from her to whose care Jesus on 
Calvary committed all his brethren in the 
person of St. John. Return to your Mother, 
she is the Mother of God ; her compassionate 
hand will lead you back to Jesus, and through 
Him to the Father. 



CELIBACY. 

You object against the celibacy of the Priest- 
hood, against the use of the Latin language in 
the Divine service, against our religious cere- 
monies. I will briefly show you that all your 
objections on these points are unfounded. 

In regard to celibacy, I must preface what I 
have to say on this subject with the remark, 

» Luke, i. 28. 
t Ibid. 42. 
t Ibid. 48. 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 217 

that celibacy is not considered as a practice 
which is absolutely indispensable, as a law 
from which there can be no departure without 
endangering the existence of the Church. The 
Catholic Priests of the Greek rite are, generally 
speaking, married ; they are not on that account 
excluded from the Catholic Church. But the 
married Greek clergy aifords a strong proof of 
the immense advantages of celibacy ; it shows 
clearly that celibacy enables the clergy to dis- 
charge their sacred duties with the greatest 
efficiency for the salvation of souls. 

If you wish to know the condition of the 
married United Greek, or Greek Catholic, 
clergy, go to Gallicia on the borders of Russia. 
Having been there, I can bear witness that 
marriage has deeply impaired the dignity and 
influence of the clergy in that country. The 
people but too often experience that their 
married pastors are not the universal spiritual 
fathers of their congregations, but that " they 
are divided," as the Apostle says of married 
people, between the care of serving God, and 
the solicitude of pleasing their wives. It is 
found that a married pastor is not only divided, 
but is often much more anxious for the tem- 
poral interests of his family, than the spiritual 
welfare of his congregation ; he takes more 
20 



218 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

pains for the former than for the latter ; 
domestic hindrances interfere with his pastoral 
duties ; his wife's influence is too great, and 
she meddles with his spiritual functions. He is 
often distrusted, particularly in connection with 
the Sacrament of Penance : Greek Catholics, 
when they have the opportunity, almost always 
prefer to confess to an unmarried Latin priest. 
From your own knowledge of men, and con- 
sulting your inclinations, would you not much 
rather, if you had to choose, confess to an 
unmarried Catholic Priest than to one of your 
married Protestant ministers ? The experi- 
ment has been tried. More than once, as you 
may know, certain Protestant denominations 
have tried to re-introduce Confession, but the 
people have always answered, that if Confession 
is necessar}^ they w^ould sooner become Catho- 
lics than go to Confession to their married 
ministers. 

The evil is still greater when a pastor has 
charge of several congregations, or in the 
case of a married Bishop who is obliged to 
visit his Diocese. He cannot always be at 
home, and jealousies and quarrels are sure to 
arise in consequence. The position of a 
married Priest becomes still more critical, if 
his wife leads a scandalous life, or if he has ill- 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 219 

bred or vicious children. When no evil of this 
kind exists, sickness or death in his family may 
at any time divert his care and attention from 
the wants of his congregation. 

An unmarried clergy is free from all these 
causes of scandal, vexation, and interference 
with pastoral duties, and never reduced to the 
necessity of choosing between the interests of 
a family, and the religious care of a congre- 
gation. 

Military discipline furnishes an apt illustra- 
tion. It is not usual, in time of war, to allow 
soldiers to marry, and a married officer or 
private is considered only half a soldier. The 
Priesthood is a militia, the army of the Church 
for the defense and protection of faith and 
morals ; and because spiritual interests are of 
all interests the most important, there are far 
more urgent reasons for an unmarried Priest- 
hood than for an unmarried soldiery. Even 
Protestant denominations have occasionally 
expressed a wish to introduce celibacy among 
their clergy.* 

* Confess. Helvet. 2. c. 29. 6 Edward, c. 21. 



220 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 



HOLY MASS. 



You object to the Mass considered as a Sacri- 
fice, and pretend that it is an injury to the great 
Sacrifice of the Cross. Your objection results 
from a misapprehension of our doctrine. Re- 
member \yiiat was said when I spoke of the conso- 
lation derived from the holy Sacrifice of the Mass. 
We do not teach that the Mass is a Sacrifice 
different from that of Calvary, but that it is the 
same Sacrifice, which Christ offers up forever 
for the salvation of men, the only difference 
being that since the Crucifixion it has been 
offered in an unbloody manner. We offer it 
because Christ has commanded us to do so — 
" Do this in remembrance of me " — as you may 
convince yourselves by reading the Gospel of 
St. Luke or St. Paul's first Epistle to the Cor- 
inthians.* The Mass is the fulfilment of the 
prophecy of Malachias, " From the rising of 
the sun even to the going down thereof, my 
name is great among the Gentiles : and in 
every place there is sacrifice, and there is 
offered to my name a clean oblation."| 

* Luke, xxii. 19 ; 1 Cor., ix. 24 seq. 
f Malach., i. 11. 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 221 



COMMimiON. 

' You object to the Catholic practice of giving 
Communion under the species of bread alone ; 
you pretend that while giving the Body 
we deprive the faithful of the Blood of Christ. 
This is another misapprehension of our doc- 
trine and of the truth. The Catholic Church 
teaches that the Body of Christ is not separated 
from the Blood, nor the Blood from the Body, 
under either species, but that Christ is living 
and as such present, after Consecration, under 
the species of both bread and wine, and is 
received, in communion, living and entire as 
He is in Heaven, under one species as well as 
under both. To think differently is a gross 
error ; it supposes that Christ is still mortal, 
and can be present under the species, not 
living, but as a corpse. Christ Himself has 
said, " If any man eat of this bread, he shall 
live forever.f" 

In the early ages of the Church, as history 
proves incontestably, communion was often 
given under one species only. Many grave 

f John, vi. 52. The same in substance is repeated in 
verse 69. 



222 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

reasons, at a later period, induced the Church 
to make it a universal practice for the laity. 
One of these reasons is, that in giving Com- 
munion under the species of wine to a large 
number of people, it is hardly possible to avoid 
irreverences ; another is the scarcity of wine 
in many countries ; but the chief motive was, 
that some men had arisen who taught the 
error that, in all cases. Communion under both 
species must necessarily be given to the laity. 



USE OF THE LATIN" LAITGUAGE. 

You take exception to the use of Latin in 
the Divine service, as it is a language which 
the people do not understand. The use of the 
Latin language is not regarded by the Church 
as absolutely necessary and unchangeable. 
In many portions of the East, she permits the 
use of the vernacular tongues. It was also 
allowed to the Sclavonians. But it does not 
follow from this that there are no highly im- 
portant reasons for the use of the Latin. 

A dead language always remains the same ; 
it is not liable to innovations, which unsettle 
the old meaning of terms in living languages, or 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 223 

debase words that were once dignified : it 
secures an unchangeable precision and an 
unalterable dignity to our liturgy and cere- 
monial. Rituals and missals printed fifty or 
two hundred years ago, answer our purpose as 
well as those that come fresh from the press. 
If the vernacular were used, there would be a 
constant need of changes; in many languages, 
as in German for instance, it would be impos- 
sible to make use of missals and rituals printed 
a hundred years ago, without altering many 
expressions which would have become obsolete, 
low, or ridiculous. 

The Catholic Church neither grows old nor 
changes ; the unchangeableness of the Latin 
language is a type of her immutability. It is 
also a type of her universality and unity ; it 
secures in her service, all the world over, the 
same uniformity that exists in her faith. In 
Asia, Africa, Australia, America, wherever a 
Catholic priest may travel, he finds the same 
missal and ritual. The Church has stamped 
her own character on her ceremonies : like her, 
they belong to all places and suit all times. 

The Latin language is the better adapted to 
the dignity and sanctity of Divine offices, as it 
is placed beyond the criticism of the crowd, 
while the vernacular could not escape the 



224 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

cavils of those who pay greater attention to 
forms than to substance. 

If the native tongue were used^ it would be 
of little benefit to the people. In many cases 
it would be impracticable for the Priest to read 
loud enough to be understood by the whole 
assembly ; when many Masses are said at the 
same time in a church, loud reading would be 
ridiculous and distressing ; in any case it would 
be inconvenient for such as have already heard 
Mass, and wish to employ their time in other 
devotions. For such as desire to follow the 
Priest, there are translations of the whole 
liturgy in all the European languages. 

The Latin liturgy, like all the rites and 
usages of the Church, has its consolations for 
the faithful. I once met with an American 
lawyer, a Protestant, who, with unusual 
freedom from prejudice, remarked to me that 
there were three things in the Catholic Church, 
which above all others, he liked and admired ; 
they were the very points which for many 
among you, who neither examine nor reflect, are 
stumbling-blocks, and occasions of ridicule and 
accusations against us, — confession, the celi- 
bacy of our clergy, and the use of Latin in our 
liturgy. The reasons he gave for his prefer- 
ence showed a correctness of judgment which 



PROTESTANT PKEJUDICEjS. 225 

astonished me. " It must be a source of 
peculiar consolation for you," he said, " to be 
able to open your hearts to a representative of 
God, to receive the advice and sympathy of a 
friend and father, and hear the beautiful words 
of absolution, Thy sins are forgiven thee." 
He felt that celibacy is the very means best 
calculated to enable a Priest to fulfil his whole 
duty, and attend exclusively to his congrega- 
tion. With regard to the use of Latin, he 
made the just and striking remark, that it must 
have a beneficial effect on the heart, and tend 
to enliven faith. " It must be very consoling 
to a Catholic," he remarked, " to hear, wherever 
he goes, the same language used in the Divine 
service as in his native countr}-. Wherever he 
is, he must feel at home." In Europe I heard 
from some persons who had been in the suite 
of the Austrian Princess in her voyage to 
Brazil, after her marriage with Don Pedro the 
Emperor of Brazil, that, when the}'' were home- 
sick in that distant country, they found it 
refreshing, on entering a church, to hear the 
same language at the altar which had been 
familiar to them at home. They felt that, 
however remote from the land of their birth, 
they were still at home, as children of the same 

Church. 

21 



226 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

The ancient language of Rome also reminds 
us of the Chair of Peter, of the great 
center of the Church, of the imperishable rock 
on which the Church is founded. There can- 
not, indeed, be any language better adapted, 
in every respect, to the dignity of our service ; 
any better calculated to console ; any that 
reflects better the Unity, Catholicity, and 
Immortality of the Church of God. 



CEREMONIES. 

Some among you stigmatize our ceremonies 
as mummeries, though every intelligent man 
among you, and even uneducated Protestants, 
when they enter our churches, are involuntarily 
struck by the grandeur of our rites. Many 
Americans and large numbers of Englishmen 
travel to Rome, for the purpose of being pre- 
sent at the sublimely impressive ceremonies of 
Holy Week, or at the varied and magnificent 
religious festivals throughout the year. If any 
of our ceremonies really appear ridiculous and 
absurd, it is only to those who do not under- 
stand their signification. Before judging and 
condemning, it would be better to seek inform- 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 227 

ation on the subject : it is unworthy of an 
intelKgent man to reject or ridicule what he 
does not understand. 

I cannot take leave of this topic, without 
saying a few words on a practice which I have 
found to be very offensive to some Protestants, 
and particularly so to Methodists. I refer to 
the Rosary or Beads. We are asked why we 
constantly repeat the same prayers, and are 
taunted as simpletons or superstitious enthu- 
siasts for doing so. 

Do you understand that which you take the 
liberty to blame ? What is the Rosary ? It con- 
sists of the most venerable prayers in existence, 
the Apostle's Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the 
Angelic Salutation. To the Angelic Salutation 
we join the salutation addressed by St. Eliza- 
beth to the Blessed Virgin, and a brief prayer 
added by the Church. While reciting the 
Rosary, we meditate on some scene or passage 
in the life, sufferings, death, resurrection of 
our Saviour, or His glorified life in heaven. 
Can you imagine a more beautiful form of 
prayer ? But still you ask, Why always 
repeat the same prayers ? And I ask you, 
Why not, provided the repetition contributes 
to devotion, and always raises our hearts to 



228 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

God? Is a rose-bush less beautiful, because 
many roses cluster on its branches ? Would it 
be finer with only one rose blushing in a 
wilderness of leaves ? The Rosary takes its 
name from the rose : its manifold repetitions, 
its beautiful remembrances of the sweet mys- 
teries of our Redemption, are like a wreath of 
roses grateful to God and refreshing to the 
soul. What if the wreath is large, and beauti- 
ful, and made up of many flowers ? Must that 
scandalize you ? • Or, to use another illustra- 
tion, is a mother displeased, because her 
favorite on her lap caressingly repeats to her, 
Mother, I love you, I love you dearly. Mother ? 
Do not the hosts of the blessed, as Isaiah and 
St. John testify, sing night and day. Holy, holy, 
holy, the Lord God of Hosts? Is God injured, 
or the love of seraphs weakened, by the repeti- 
tion ? You will not pretend it. Once for all, 
I would commend to your reflections the advice 
of our Saviour, " Judge not according to the 
appearance, but judge a just judgment."* 
Learn what Catholics really hold, teach, and 
practice before you pass sentence upon us. 

* Joliii, viii. 24. 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 229 



ABSTINENCE. 

You object to the Catholic practice of fast- 
ing, and especially to our practice of abstain- 
ing from meat on Fridays and certain other 
days of the year. You even attempt to sup- 
port your objections b}' quotations from Scrip- 
ture ; you say, " Not that which goeth into the 
mouth, defileth a man; but what cometh out 
of the mouth, this defileth a man." If your 
objection had any force, it would hold against 
the command which God gave to Adam, not to 
eat the fruit of a certain tree. 

Abstinence is prescribed by the Church as a 
wholesome practice of penance, as an appro- 
priate mode of honoring the Passion of Christ, 
and in imitation of His Divine example. 
Christ underwent voluntary suffering ; it can- 
not be wrong to follow such a model. 

Some of you, perhaps, imagine that the 
Church regards the use of meat as sinful in 
itself; this is an error. The Church knows 
fhat Christ Himself ate the paschal lamb with 
Elis disciples ; she allows the use of meat at 
all times except on the appointed days o\ 



230 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

abstinence. Bat as the Church wished to 
establish a universal observance in honor of 
the Passion of Jesus Christ, and one which 
might at the same time be a practice of 
penance, what way better adapted to her 
purpose could she have chosen, than the 
prohibition on stated days of a certain kind 
of food ? Moreover, by this precept, she 
affords all her children an opportunity of 
exercising the most necessary virtues of obedi- 
ence and humility, giving a common command 
to all, and requiring all, the rich as well as the 
poor, to obey it. 



EXCLUSIVE SALVATION. 

You are exceedingly angry with us for 
asserting that out of the Catholic Church 
there is no salvation ; you conclude that 
we condemn you all to everlasting ruin, before 
God has judged you. I reply that we teach 
the doctrine, and it is the truth, but your con- 
clusion is unfounded. 

The Catholic Church teaches, and has always 
taught, that she is the only true Church of 
Christ, and, therefore, that out of her pale 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 231 

there is no salvation : one proposition follows 
from the other. As soon as the Church begins 
to teach, which she never will, that men can 
be saved out of her communion, she ceases to 
be the true Church of Christ. 

If you were at all confident that Protestant- 
ism is the true Church of Christ, you would 
say as much as we do, and every Religion that 
does not, gives up all claim to be Divinely 
instituted for the salvation of mankind. This 
I shall prove from the very idea of Religion, 
and, in particular, from the idea of the Christian 
Religion. 

What is Religion ? As the word implies, it 
is a bond which unites men to God. The 
idea of Religion includes faith and practice, a 
belief of truth and a performance of duties, by 
which we are to attain to the eternal possession 
of God, the ultimate and onl}^ end of our exist- 
ence. Now, as surely as there is but one 
God, and but one human race, so surely can 
there be but one faith and one moral law, 
established by the Almighty to lead men to 
heaven. 

If Religion were only a system of outward 
observances and external forms of worship, a 
mere ceremonial, then there might be as many 
Religions, as men might choose to frame 



232 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

rituals ; but the question is in regard to Reli- 
gion in the strict meaning of the word, and 
especiall}" regarding religious faith and duties. 
What is truth for one is truth for all : and what 
is strict duty for man as such, is strict duty for 
every man. To deny it is to deny that God is 
Truth. Take Confession for instance ; has it 
been instituted by Christ as a means of salva- 
tion, or has it not? There is no medium. If 
Confession has not been instituted as a means 
of salvation, then there is no obligation to have 
recourse to it ; but if it has been established as 
a necessary means of salvation for all who 
have sinned after Baptism, then no one who 
has thus sinned can be saved without it. Are 
you prepared to say that God has obliged 
Catholics, under pain of eternal loss, to confess 
their sins to the Priest as His representative, 
but that He has not obliged Protestants to do so ? 
The same reasoning holds good in regard to 
every other religious duty. In other words, if 
there is any Divine Religion, there can be but 
one, and out of it, there can be no salvation. 

The reasoning so frequently resorted to, that 
all men have one common Father, and there- 
fore can be saved in all Religions, is simply 
ridiculous. It is precisely because there is but 
one God that there can be but one true 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 233 

Religion. Because there is but one God, the 
sanie religious duties are binding on all men, 
and whoever does not fulfil them must be lost 
forever. You say, We all believe in the same 
Christ. But because you all believe in the 
same Christ, you are all bound to accept the 
faith and obey the laws which He has estab- 
lished in His Church. His Church, as I have 
proved, is the Catholic Church alone, and there- 
fore out of the Catholic Church there is no 
salvation. Christ has said, " If he will not 
hear the Church, let him be to thee as the 
heathen and the publican."* " He that be- 
lieveth not, shall be condemned."! 

If men could be saved in all Religions, there 
would be no necessity for the Christian Reli- 
gion ; Christ would have ordered His Apostles 
to no purpose to go and preach to all nations ; 
His command that all men should believe, in 
order to be saved, would have had no meaning. 
If Christ has founded a Church, all that she 
teaches as the Church of Christ must be believed, 
for all her doctrines rest on the same infallible 
authority of Christ. To reject a single article 
of faith wilfully, is sufficient to incur eternal 
loss, for it is to deny the whole Divine character 

* Matt., xviii. 17. 
f Mark, xvi. 16. 



234 . PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

of faith and of the Church of Christ ; it is to 
impeach the authority and truthfulness of God. 
He who can neither deceive nor be deceived 
has revealed every article of faith taught hy 
His Church. " Whosoever shall keep the whole 
law," says the Holy Ghost, " but offend in 
one point, is become guilty of all."* Either 
the whole faith is true, or the whole of it is 
false ; we must either believe or reject the 
whole, for if it errs in one point, it cannot have 
come from God. 

On the subject of exclusive salvation the 
doctrine of the earl}^ Fathers of the Church is 
unanimous. They all teach that out of the 
Catholic Church there is no salvation. St. 
Cyprian, in the middle of the third century, 
says in his book on the Unity of the Church, 
" He cannot have God for his Father, who has 
not the Church for his Mother." St. Augustine, 
who wrote at the end of the fourth and the 
beginning of the fifth century, says, "■ Whoso- 
ever is separated from this Catholic Church, 
shall not have life, but the anger of God 
remains upon him."f St. Gregory the Great, 
who was Pope at the end of the sixth century, 
thus briefly states the Catholic doctrine : " The 

* James, ii. 10. 

t Ad. Part. Fact. Dan. c. 141. 



PROTECTANT PREJUDICES. 23o 

Holy Catholic Church teaches, that out of her 
communion no one can be saved."* 

As Christians you believe, as well as we, 
that a man who dies in the state of mortal sin 
is lost, that " neither fornicators, nor idolaters, 
nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor sodom- 
ites, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor 
drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall 
possess the Kingdom of God."t Is not the 
denial of an article of faith a mortal sin, as 
well as theft, drunkenness, or uncleanness ? 
The wilful denial of an article of faith is a 
direct insult offered to the veracity and 
authority of God, and is a more grievous sin 
than any injury that can be inflicted upon men. 
There is hardly an insult which you resent 
more deeply than to be branded as a liar. A 
man may be accused of having defrauded the 
State, and take but little notice of the accusa- 
tion, who, if he is called a liar, is ready to 
answer with his revolver. He who deliber- 
ately denies an article of faith calls in question 
the veracity of God. The man who has the 
boldness to say in the face of Heaven, I know 
that this is a revealed truth taught as such by 

* Lib. Mor. 14. 
t 1 Cor.; vi., 9, 10. 



236 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

the infallible authority of the Church of Christ, 
but I will not believe it ; or who, when a 
doctrine is authoritativel}^ proposed to him as 
an article of faith, does not care to inquire 
whether it is a revealed truth or not, that man 
evidently despises God as the eternal Truth, and 
if he dies with such an offense upon his con- 
science, w^e need not wonder that he is lost 
forever. 

Are we, Catholics, the cause of his ruin ? 
Do we condemn him to the pains of hell? 
Evidently not. He is lost by his own act; he 
condemns himself. When you tell us that, in 
spite of our being Catholics, if we die in mortal 
sin, we shall be lost, you are not the cause of 
our condemnation, you simply foretell what 
will happen. A bad Catholic is lost by his 
own fault ; so when we say, that no matter 
how moral your lives may be, if you 
die in wdlful heresy, you will be inevitably 
lost, we do not pronounce your eternal sen- 
tence, but simply warn you in time. God 
alone is your judge and ours ; He alone can 
pronounce the sentence of eternal condemna- 
tion : if he condemns you for wilful unbelief, 
you will have incurred the sentence by your 
own fault, not by ours. 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 2o7 

You may ask me, If a man is in invincible 
ignorance of the true faith, and yet observes 
the moral law, will he be lost? I answer that 
such a man will die in the Catholic Church. 
Either in his life, or at the moment of his death, 
the Providence of God will give him the means, 
extraordinary means if necessary, to know the 
faith, as far at least as is indispensably neces- 
sary for salvation. We must here distinguish 
between two classes of persons, the bap- 
tized and the unbaptized. As this is a 
subject but little understood, and seldom well 
explained, I beg your particular attention to 
the following remarks. 

With regard to persons born in Protestant 
countries and validly baptized, who, from want 
of instruction and opportunity, have never come 
to the knowledge that the Catholic Church is 
the only true Church of Christ, if they have 
never committed a mortal sin, or have atoned 
for their sins by perfect contrition, united to 
a sincere desire of doing all that God may 
require of them, they will be saved in the 
ordinary way. as members of the Catholic 
Church. Such persons are in reality Catho- 
lics ; they have entered the Church by valid 
baptism, and are only outwardly separated 
from her communion by inculpable error. 



238 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

According to Catholic doctrine there is but one 
baptism; it is always valid, whether adminis- 
tered by a Christian, Jew, infidel, or heathen, 
provided it is conferred wdth the rites estab- 
lished by Christ and with the intention of 
conferring what Christ has instituted ; every 
man who is thus baptized becomes, at the 
moment of his baptism, a member of the 
Catholic Church. It is true that Protestants are 
generally baptized on being received into the 
Catholic Church ; this is done because, outside 
of the Catholic Church, baptism is often in- 
validly administered. In any case it is not 
our intention to confer a second baptism ; 
we confer it conditionally, in order to give 
the convert the assurance that he is truly 
baptized. Baptism is never renewed, when no 
doubt exists of the validity of the first baptism. 
In some countries, there are large numbers of 
Protestants validly baptized who are invincibly 
ignorant of the true Church ; they are mem- 
bers of the Catholic Church, and without know- 
ing it die in the Catholic communion. All who 
are validly baptized remain Catholics, until 
they apostatize by a culpable adherence to an 
error against faith, or culpably neglect to 
inquire, when a well-founded suspicion of error 
arises in their mind. I hope that great num- 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 239 

bers of Protestants are thus saved, not indeed 
as Protestants, but as members of the Catholic 
Church, the only true Church of Christ. 

The case of heathens differs considerably 
from that of baptized Protestants. Heathens 
who are in error inculpably, and serve God to 
the best of their ability, according to the light 
which they possess, and are ready to do all 
that Heaven may desire from them, will cer- 
tainl}^ be saved. They may never receive the 
baptism of water, but for them what is called 
in the Catholic Church the baptism of desire, is 
sufficient. Their efforts to please God in- 
clude the desire to know the true faith, and 
willingness to embrace it ; and as to sanctify- 
ing grace, which is also necessary for salvation, 
God, who is unwilling that men should perish 
when they do their utmost to please Him, 
infuses into their souls, in the course of their 
lives, or at the moment of their death, the 
same sanctifying grace that is conferred by the 
baptism of water. If they fall into mortal sin, 
they may receive the grace to elicit an act of 
perfect contrition, and thereby obtain forgive- 
ness. Their salvation is not according to the 
ordinary course of Providence, but the result of 
an extraordinary grace, conferred in view of 
the merits of Christ. By the baptism of desire 



240 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

they become members of the true Church of 
Christ, the Catholic Church, and are saved 
only as members of her communion. 

In other words, there is only one way to 
heaven, but there are several ways that lead to 
the Catholic Church, for, besides the baptism 
of water, there is the baptism of blood, or 
martyrdom suffered by an unbaptized person 
for the faith of Christ, and the baptism of 
desire, of which I have just spoken. How 
many are saved by the baptism of desire, 
whether they are few or numerous, is known to 
God alone ; we may cheerfully leave it in the 
hands of God, whose boundless mercy extends 
to every human soul, and never allows one to 
perish except through its own grievous fault. 
The Catholic Church says, with St. Thomas 
Aquinas, that if a man sincerely desires to 
know the truth, and observes the moral law to 
the best of his power, God, if necessary, will 
send an angel to enlighten him, and lead him 
into the Catholic Church, rather than allow him 
to perish. Thus we read in the Acts, that an 
Angel was sent to the Centurion ; and it is 
worthy of observation that the Centurion 
received the Holy Ghost, and therefore 
became a member of the Church, before he 
received the baptism of water. 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 241 

But you must remember that all this holds 
true only in regard to those who are in invin- 
cible ignorance of the true Church. It 
does not by any means apply to that class 
of persons, which I fear is very numerous, 
who have an opportunity of knowing the 
truth, and wilfully neglect it; who close their 
eyes against the light, stifle the warnings 
of conscience, and, come w^hat may, resolutely 
determine to die out of the CathoHc Church. 
They do not wish to make the sacrifices which 
their conversion to the Catholic Church would 
require. They act like the Areopagites, or 
Felix the Roman Governor, who told St. Paul 
that they would hear him another time; or like 
the Jews who stopped their ears, and stoned St. 
Stephen. They cannot claim that their ignor- 
ance is invincible ; they sin against the Holy 
Ghost, and if they die in that condition, must be 
lost forever. 

No one who has read these pages can plead 
invincible ignorance. You have had an 
opportunity of examining, and convincing 
yourselves of the truth of the Catholic Church. 
Even if m}^ work should not carry conviction 
with it, still it must have raised doubts in your 
minds, and it thus obliges you to pursue your 
researr.hes^ until you have discovered the true 



242 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

Church of Christ ; if you refuse to do so, you 
incur grievous guilt, which must cause your 
everlasting ruin. If you investigate with 
candor and perseverance, a time will come, 
sooner or later, when you can no longer doubt 
that you must embrace the Catholic faith as 
your only hope of salvation. 

It is unjust to accuse us of a want of charity 
in asserting that out of the Catholic Church 
there is no salvation. We publish our doctrine 
freely, because we love you sincerely and 
desire your salvation. In your researches 
every zealous Catholic is ready to assist you. 
We condemn error only, and leave the judg- 
ment of consciences to God, to whom alone 
such judgment belongs. We love all men as 
children of the same Heavenly Father, and as 
redeemed by the same Saviour ; we are ready 
to sacrifice for their salvation our property, our 
honor, our lives. The doctrine that out of the 
Catholic Church there is no salvation, so far 
from weakening our charity towards you, serves 
to quicken it, and to inspire us with a zeal that 
shrinks from no labor, no sacrifice for your 
salvation. 



PEOTESTAJST PREJUDICES. 243 



SECTION II. 



POLITICAL PREJUDICES. 



Having now briefly reviewed and refuted 
your hereditary prejudices as Protestants, I 
proceed to the consideration of your political 
prejudices, or your prejudices as American 
citizens. 



ALLEGIANCE. 

You have been taught that we owe political 
allegiance to the Pope, and cannot be loyal 
citizens. This is a calumny without a shadow 
of foundation in theory or practice. The Pope 
is for Catholics the ultimate interpreter of the 



244 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

moral law ; when a doubt arises whether an 
action is morally lawful or not, the final deci- 
sion rests with the Pope. From this, as is 
evident to every man of candor, no danger can 
arise to the State. The State may be im- 
perilled, and history and experience testify 
that States have been brought to the verge of 
ruin, by the Private Interpretation of the Bible : 
there is imminent danger to political institu- 
tions, when men appeal to their Private Inter- 
pretation of the Bible to settle such a question, 
for instance, as that of Slavery. 



THE INQUISITION. 

The Inquisition, a word of terror, is an 
occasion of much prejudice against the Catho- 
lic Church. You hope that to object against 
us the practices of the Inquisition will act like 
a torch in a powder magazine, and blow up 
the claims, the proofs, the truth, the Divinity 
of the Catholic Church. We smile at the 
simplicity of your hopes. Every man ac- 
quainted with history, whether he is a Pro- 
testant or a Catholic, knows that the Inquisition 
can furnish no objection against the Church. 
You may frighten your children with the name. 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 245 

Your objections are drawn from the Spanish 
Inquisition. Every man who knows anything 
of Spanish history knows perfectly well that 
the Spanish Inquisition, so far as it is objection- 
able, is of purely political origin, and has 
nothing at all to do with the claims of the 
Catholic Church. Like the Sicilian Vespers, 
and the massacre of St. Bartholomew's, it was 
a purely political persecution against heretics 
and unbelievers. While it lasted, the Popes 
exerted their utmost efforts to control its action 
and prevent abuse. 

But the Spanish Inquisition is not alone to 
blame : Protestants have had their share in 
the work of persecution. Whoever has studied 
history to any purpose, and is willing to speak 
impartially, must confess that the English 
Inquisition under Elizabeth was not behind the 
Spanish Inquisition in rigor : the only differ- 
ence between the two is, that there are more 
numerous and more unquestionable proofs of 
the injustice and cruelty of the former, than of 
the horrors of the latter. Abuses exist in all 
human institutions ; the Catholic Church can- 
not be responsible for the conduct of States 
and individuals which she condemns, nor for 
disorders which she has never commanded or 
approved. 



246 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

If you wish to throw odium on the Church, 
why do you not attack the Roman Inquisition, 
in preference to the Spanish? The truth is, 
that the Roman Inquisition furnishes no fair 
field for calumny. It is true you often men- 
tion Galileo, but you cannot prove that he was 
treated cruelly. He was forbidden to teach his 
theory as an absolute certainty at a time when 
no absolute certainty existed on the subject: 
Galileo's proofs, as is now admitted, did not 
demonstrate his theory. The authority of 
Scripture was apparently called in question ; 
in order to avoid scandal, Galileo was allowed 
to teach his theory only as an hypothesis, 
until it should be fully proved. His imprison- 
ment, of which so much has been said, was 
nothing more than a nominal and brief confine- 
ment to the apartments of the Fiscal of the 
Inquisition, or to the Palace of Trinita del 
Monte, situated in the healthiest part of Rome. 
He himself wrote in 1633, that he had always 
been treated with respect. The story of his 
abjuration has not been proved, and were it 
proved would be a stain on his character, for 
the story is. that on rising after the abjuration, 
he exclaimed, " E pur si move — It does move, 
though." Can you reconcile such a contra- 
diction with his stern character ? 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 247 

If silence was at last imposed on Galileo, it 
was owing to his intemperate zeal and impru- 
dence. At that very time his system was pub- 
licly taught at Rome as an hypothesis, without 
any interference from the ecclesiastical autho- 
rities. The system had warm advocates in the 
highest ranks of the Roman clergy. Since you 
place so high a value on the authority of 
Scripture, you must admit, that, all things 
considered, there was nothing in the proceed- 
ings of the Inquisition not justified by the 
circumstances of the time, to save the authority 
of the Scriptures from apparent contradiction 
with cosmological demonstrations. The Church 
has never pronounced a dogmatic definition on 
the subject. 

The whole question of the Inquisition has 
nothing to do with the Church as such ; it is a 
question of temporary and variable discipline, 
not a question of faith. The Church existed 
for ages without any such tribunal, and, with 
or without it, shall exist to the end of time. 
She is not responsible for abuses which must 
exist in all human institutions. 

Galileo's system was censured with the 
utmost severity in Protestant countries. Such 
men as Tycho Brahe, the great Protestant 
astronomer, Bacon, Alexander Ross, were' 



248 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

opposed to it. Much, indeed, might be said 
about the persecution of science by Protestants. 
For two hundred years England refused to 
adopt the Gregorian Calendar, and chose " to 
quarrel with the stars " rather than agree with 
the Pope in counting time. Descartes was, 
in consequence of his philosophical views, most 
shamefully persecuted by the churchmen of 
Protestant Holland. Galileo was neither ex- 
iled, nor stripped of his honors and emoluments, 
while Christian Wolf, the most amiable of 
men, was wrongly accused, and condemned as 
an atheist by Protestants. Let Protestants, 
who are forever talking about the days of 
Galileo, remember their own Inquisitions at 
that very epoch. " The synod of Dort, that. 
Protestant Council convened by Pope James, 
ratified its decrees in the blood of the patriot 
Barneveldt, and Moloch-like demanded for its 
victims whole hecatombs of its own children. 
. What Inquisition more complete 
than the hateful Star-Chamber ? or the High- 
Ecclesiastical Commission-court for the sup- 
pression of heresy?" With many Protestants 
the story of Galileo is as fresh as though it 
were of yesterday, while they forget " those 
modes of Inquisition," as Burke said, " that 
-should never be mentioned to ears organized 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 249 

to the chaste sounds of equity and justice."* 
Protestants would do better never to mention 
Galileo, in order that we may not, in our turn, 
be forced to inquire into their own excesses 
of religious hatred. 



DESPOTISM. 

Your historical objections, to which the pr - 
sent one belongs, always turn out to be 
either gross misrepresentations, pure fabri- 
cations of unscrupulous writers, or irrele- 
vant to the question whether the Catholic 
Church is or is not the only true Church of 
Christ. The question is not about individual 
errors and crimes — Christ did not come to 
make men impeccable — the question is, which 
is the true Church established by Christ. 

Before believing what historians advance 
against us, you should carefully weigh their 
testimony. Much of what passes for history is 
mere fable ; much of it is distorted and 
colored by the writers' prejudices: facts are 

* See an Article on Galileo from tbe Dublin JRevietc, 
republished in Cincinnati by J. P. "Walsh, 1859. See also 
Biographic Universelle, t. IV. p. 72, and llistor, Polit. 
Blatter. Munich. 

23 



250 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

judged, not according to their circumstances, 
but according to preconceived notions. This 
is not history, but imagination. If you love 
historical truth, do not believe more than 
historians can prove ; do not confine your 
reading to Protestant authors alone ; read the 
statements made by Catholic writers, and form 
your own judgments. If you follow this plan, 
your ideas regarding Catholic history will 
undergo considerable modifications ; and 
though you may often find reason to condemn 
the acts of individual Catholics, you will never 
condemn the Catholic Church as such. The 
objection of despotism is more directly ans- 
wered in a subsequent article on Republicanism. 

CIVILIZATION. 



You make it an objection against the Catho- 
lic Church, that Protestant nations, in your 
opinion, are superior to Catholic nations in 
industry, commerce, and general civilization. 
I hesitate answering an objection which is so 
little to the purpose ; but as it is seriously 
urged by many among you, I shall bestow a 
few remarks upon it. Suppose, for the sake of 
argument, that things are as you represent 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 251 

them, what conclusion follows against the 
claims of the Catholic Church to be the only 
true Church of Christ and the onl}^ saving 
Church ? I am astonished that such objections 
should ever have been thought of. " There is 
no relation," as Mr. Baine justly remarks, " of 
cause and effect between a magnificent iron 
foundry and a Divine revelation, and what 
consequences exist in, what facts may flow 
from, what moral or Divine truths there may 
be connected with a spinning-jennj'^, is not 
perceived by the catholic mind."* 

Did Christ come to teach men the arts of 
commerce, to render them skilful money- 
makers, to train them in the construction of 
railroads, steamboats, and cotton factories ? 
He has said, "My Kingdom is not of this 
world." " In this world you shall have dis- 
tress." " What will it profit a man, if he 
gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ?" 
Those who are forever making earthly success, 
wealth, and power a test of religious truth, are 
like the carnal Jews, who awaited an earthly 
Messiah. The blessing of Esau, " the fat of 
the earth," has always appeared to Christians 
the least desirable of all blessings ; they fear 

* Baine, sect. xi. 



252 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

receiving their reward on earth, and having 
none in Heaven. If wealth and material 
power are signs of Divine truth, the Roman 
empire ought never to have forsaken its 
idolatry for Christianity. 

The whole objection is groundless. God, 
because He is God, as St. Augustine remarks, 
can give temporal blessings to the good as 
well as to the wicked. France and Belgium 
are Catholic countries, and not behind their 
Protestant neighbors in civilization. Your 
own civilization, it must not be forgotten, is of 
Catholic origin. Many of your institutions 
are derived from Great Britain, and all 
that is really good, grand, and noble in the 
British Constitution, has come down from 
Catholic times. Modern civilization did not 
spring from Protestantism like Minerva from 
the head of Jove. In skill, science, art, inven- 
tions, and discoveries. Catholic nations do not 
yield to Protestant countries ; it is an historical 
fact that the most important discoveries, in 
every branch of art, science, and industry, 
were in a great measure made by Catholics. 
Every library in the world contains immortal 
monuments of Catholic genius ; Europe is 
covered with masterpieces of Catholic archi- 
tects, sculptors, and painters. 



PROTESTANT PRblJODICES. 253 

What would Europe be without the civilizing 
influence of the Catholic Church ? Little 
better than a wilderness, overrun by the rude 
descendants of Northern barbarians. The 
Catholic Church civilized the Huns, Goths, 
Lombards, Franks, Saxons, the ancestors of 
all the modern European nations: by the side 
of this immense result of Catholic influence, 
you cannot name a single nation reclaimed 
from barbarism or the savage state by Pro- 
testantism. In North America, Protestantism 
has not civilized a single Indian tribe ; the 
ancient possessors of the soil of the United 
States have been exterminated or driven to 
the Western prairies. In the whole of the 
South, Central, and North American States, 
every civilized Indian tribe has received its 
civilizatiom from Catholic missionaries, and 
their work would have been far more successful 
but for the frequent intrigues of Protestants. 
Look at Mexico, a country which you so often 
revile, but which would excite your admira- 
tion, did you consider the advance which it 
has made in civilization from the condition 
in which it was three hundred years ago, when 
inhabited by savages. 

Whoever wishes to see this subject discussed 



254 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

more fally, would do well to read the essays 
upon it in Dr. Brownson's " Quarterly Review." 



MORALITY. 

Many among you object, that Protestant 
nations are more moral than Catholic nations. 
This objection has been completely refuted 
by Dr. Brownson and other writers, and the 
blindest fanaticism alone could have given 
birth to it. So odious is it that I hesitate to 
give it even a cursory notice ; but it has been 
so often brought forward, that I cannot wholly 
pass it over in silence. 

Who has made you judges of the living and 
the dead ? Who has revealed to you the 
secrets of all hearts ? Or do you judge from 
outward appearances ? Admitting that Catho- 
lic countries exhibit more outward marks of 
immorality, because less hypocritical, I may 
still ask. What follows from it as to their real 
moral condition, as compared with Protestant 
countries ? Did not the Pharisees appear 
infinitel}^ more holy than the Publicans ? And 
still our Saviour calls the Pharisees " whitened 
sepulchres." The Publican went home justi- 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 255 

fied, and the prayerful, fasting, self-righteous 
Pharisee is described as an arrant hypocrite. 
" Wo to you, Scribes and Pharisees," said our 
Saviour, " because you devour the houses of 
vv^idovvs, making long prayers."* What do 
the crimes of individual Catholics prove ? Is 
the Church to be condemned on their account? 
If so, you must condemn Christ ; for one of 
His own Apostles betrayed Him, Peter denied 
Him, all fled from Him at the first sign of 
danger. Does the sin of the Apostles destroy 
their authority as Apostles and founders of 
the true Church of Christ, and render His 
Church the synagogue of Satan from the 
beginning ? Did not the Jews crucify the 
Messiah? and still were they not the true 
Church of old ? 

But your objection is without foundation. 
It is proved by statistics that the crimes com- 
mitted in England, Prussia, and the United 
States, exceed by far the crimes committed in 
Catholic countries. For proof of this fact I refer 
you to the report made by Dr. Forbes to the 
British Government, in the year 18.52, in which 
it is shown that there is incomparably more 

* Matt., xxiii. 14. 



25^ PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

crime in London alone than in the whole of 
Ireland. 

It is sometimes made a reproach against the 
Catholic Church, that there is more liveliness, 
more merriment, more geniality of intercom*se 
in Catholic than in Protestant countries, and 
that the latter are distinguished from the 
former by a soberness of temper inclining to 
melancholy and sadness. This is a strange 
objection. All excess is blamable ; but is 
cheerfulness a sin? Is it not rather a sign of 
moral health ? Catholic nations are not made 
up of melancholy devotees, it is true, but that 
speaks in their favor. Protestants have rea- 
sons enough to be sad ; we have as many 
reasons to be cheerful. " Rejoice in the Lord 
always," says the Apostle, " again I say, 
rejoice."* I willingly admit the charge. 



THE SABBATH. 

You object, also, that Catholics do not keep 
the Sabbath or Sunday, but spend a great part 
of it in worldly amusements. This reproach, 
in some respects, and as against a certain 

* Philip, iv. 4. 



PKOTESTANT PREJaOICES. 257 

number of Catholics, is not unfounded. It is 
true that some Catholics break the Sabbath ; 
but that is not the fault of the Catholic Church ; 
she condemns their conduct as sinful. To be 
convinced of this, it is sufficient to open our 
Catechisms, or to listen to Catholic sermons. 
The Catholic Church, however, does not teach 
the rigid doctrines of Puritans and other 
denominations in England and America, whose 
views about the observance of the Sabbath are 
Jewish rather than Christian. The Church, in 
virtue of the power which she has received 
from Christ, abolished the Jewish Sabbath, and 
substituted Sunday in its stead, in commemora- 
tion of the most glori-ous mysteries of our 
Redemption. Sunday being instituted to com- 
memorate mysteries of joy, the Church has 
mitigated the rigor of the Jewish Sabbath, and 
does not forbid as sinful, decent recreations 
indulged in on that day. 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPE AND HIS CIVIL 
GOVERNMENT. 



You dislike to see the Head of the Church 
governing a small territory in Italy, as an 
independent and sovereign prince. This 



258 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

appears to you incompatible with his reli- 
gious authority, with his duties as Head of the 
Church, which is a spiritual kingdom, and hence 
you condemn his political sovereignt}^ 

I answer, This objection, like all others 
brought against the Church, arises from the lack 
of a thorough examination of the subject. For 
if you consider the Pope's situation as Head 
of the Catholic or universal Church, you will 
be forced to admit that his temporal independ- 
ence as a sovereign Prince, is not only not in 
contradiction with his spiritual office, but on 
the contrary is, if not of absolute necessity, 
at least most expedient for the free exercise 
of his spiritual power. And the obvious 
reason is, that to enjoy the full confidence of 
Christians throughout the earth, he must be 
beyond even the suspicion of being influenced 
in his spiritual government by any temporal 
power. Were the Pope only the superinten- 
dent of a provincial Church, like the dignitaries 
of the Methodist, Presbyterian, and Episcopa- 
lian denominations, the case would be different. 
But the Pope is the Head of the whole Church, 
in both hemispheres : the sun never sets on his 
Spiritual Kingdom, which unites as brethren 
members of all the nations on the earth. 
Therefore, in the ceremonies for the installation 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 259 

of a new Pope, he is addressed in these words : 
"Noveris te urbis et orbis constitLitum esse 
rectorem. — Remember that thou art placed on 
the throne of Peter as the ruler of Rome and 
the world." Such being his mission on earth, 
the freer his authority the better. 

History gives us a striking proof, in the 
temporary residence of the Popes at Avignon, 
that even a suspicion of a preponderating 
political influence is exceedingly dangerous to 
the interests of religion. Every one knows 
how great at that epoch were the evils that reli- 
gion had to endure, simply because the freedom 
of the Sovereign Pontiff' seemed to be checked 
by the influence of France. 

Why has the District of Columbia been 
rendered independent, if not because the seat 
of Government being placed there, the nation 
was unwilling that any particular State of the 
Union, by possessing the Capitol, should have 
even a shadow of preponderance in the adminis- 
tration of affairs. A similar reason, but with 
incomparably more strength, proves the pro- 
priety of the political independence of the 
Pope. Americans profess admiration for free 
governments ; they should therefore rejoice 
that the Pope is free in the administration of 
his Spiritual power. 



260 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

But, besides, the dignity of the Vicar of 
Christ is too exalted to be borne by a sub- 
ject of an earthly prince. Such seems to have 
been the pervading sentiment of Christian 
princes since the days of Constantine the' 
Great. This great Emperor, who first placed 
the cross on his crown, transferred his residence 
to Constantinople, and, what is still more 
remarkable in this connection, even after the 
division of the Roman Empire, none of the 
Western Emperors resided in Rome, but in 
Milan, Turin, or other places. 

As to the pretended abuses of the Papal 
government, I have only to say that the source 
whence you derive your information, is suffi- 
cient to cause its rejection. You rely almost 
exclusively on the accounts of them given by 
Englishmen, who, influenced by the fanatical 
tendencies of their country, endeavor b}^ mis- 
representation and exaggeration to inflame 
public opinion against the Pontifical adminis- 
tration. A similar spirit of fanaticism too 
often pervades newspapers, books of travel, 
and other publications in this country. 

Candid inquiry proves that there are fewer 
defects in the administration of the Papal 
States than in that of any other State, Empire, 
or Republic. The very last statistics demon- 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 261 

strate, beyond a doubt, that with respect to 
schools, benevolent institutions, and the proper 
administration of the laws, the States of the 
Church are rather in advance of every other 
country. This has been shown conclusively 
by several works lately published, amongst 
others by Mr. Maguire's work on " Rome, its 
Churches, its Charities, and its Institutions," 
to which I refer you for fuller information on 
this matter. 



REPUBLICANISM. 

The last objection I shall notice is that, as 
some among you contend, the Catholic Church 
is not in harmony with the institutions of this 
country, nor with the character of its people, 
and that she is generally opposed to liberal 
political institutions. 

The truth is the very reverse of the objection. 
Though the government of the Catholic Church 
is not properly republican, yet all the blessings 
which render your form of government dear to 
j^ou, are claimed by the Catholic Church as 
peculiarly belonging to her own form of govern- 
ment; and your national character, if the 



262 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

country should become Catholic, would make 
you as good and zealous Catholics, under 
Divine grace, as exist on earth. I will briefly 
prove these assertions. 

The soul of your political institutions is 
liberty. Liberty is all the Catholic Church 
demands for herself; she needs not, and does 
not ask, any special protection ; give her the 
full freedom guaranteed her by the Constitu- 
tion, and enjoyed by every sect of Christians, 
and she is satisfied. The sun does not ask 
light from the earth ; her own beams disperse 
the morning fog, and pierce the cloud. All 
the Church demands for her prosperity and 
growth, all she needs to remove your pre- 
judices, is freedom of action. 

Gregory XVI. used to say, " Out of the 
Roman States, there is no country where I am 
Pope, except the United States." In Catholic 
countries, as the numerous Concordats prove, 
the Church in many respects has her rights 
restricted ; here she is legally free, the only 
Concordat she asks is your Constitution. 
Indeed, all she asks in any country is her 
freedom, not Concordats ; she has no need of 
Concordats when she is free. 

Under your Constitution the ablest men, 
\vithout respect to birth or ancestry, are chosen 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 263 

for public offices. The same practice prevails 
in the Church. Run over any list of Popes, 
Cardinals, or Bishops, and you will find that 
most of them sprang from the common people; 
those descended from the nobility almost form 
the exception. Never has a single king or 
prince sat on the Papal chair. According to 
the laws of the Church, talent, virtue, merit, are 
the qualities by which the appointment or 
election to ecclesiastical offices must be guided, 
and these qualities exercise a more uniform and 
decided influence in the Church, than they do 
even in the American republic. You have a 
striking proof of this in the person of Gregory 
VII., in whom, according to Protestant estima- 
tion, all the power of the Popes was concen- 
trated as in a focus : he was the son of a 
carpenter. The avenue to the Papacy is open 
to every Catholic ; even a layman may become 
a Pope, and I was informed by Cardinal Spinola 
that the practice at this day, when a new Pope 
is to be elected, is to place a lay senator on 
the list of candidates. 

Prejudiced and partial historians, who shape 
facts to suit their preconceived opinions and 
preferences, are in the habit of calumniating 
the Catholic hierarchy, and especially the 
political conduct of the Popes. They may 



264 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

impose on the ignorant multitude, but cannot 
deceive the impartial researches of the learned. 
The Popes who have been most reviled have 
found defenders in the ranks of Protestants ; 
Gregory VIL has been vindicated in the beau- 
tiful history of his reign by the Protestant Voit, 
and Innocent III. in the great work of Hurter, 
written while he was still a Protestant. The 
stereotype slanders against them have been 
refuted, and they have taken their place before 
the world among the brightest ornaments of 
history. '' There is no line of men," says the 
learned Protestant historian Herder, " so dis- 
tinguished for talent and for virtue, as the mag- 
nificent succession of the Popes." Among the 
Roman Pontiffs, hardly five or six, in eighteen 
centuries, can be named in whom the implac- 
able hostility of the enemies of the Catholic 
Church, has been able to find a stain ; and 
nearly all these few are limited to the eleventh 
century, an unruly period, when the freedom of 
Papal elections was disturbed by external 
interference. And what, after all, are these 
few Popes reproached with? Herder will 
answer, " Their faults were such as would not 
have been noticed, had they not been the 
moral failings of the Popes ; they are such as 
would pass unnoticed in other princes." 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 265 

It is an undeniable fact, if anything in 
history is undeniable, that none have labored 
more successfully for the freedom of nations 
than the Popes, as is proved by their undying 
struggle against oriental and occidental des- 
pots. This glorious fact is acknowledged b}^ 
Protestant historians, and even by such men as 
Montesquieu and the unprincipled Voltaire, 
not one of whom can be suspected of any 
partiality towards the Roman See. Leo, 
Wolfgang Menzel, and other great modern 
Protestant historians, admire with us the strenu- 
ous efforts of the Papacy in behalf of freedom. 
At this hour, almost alone in Europe, in the 
face of high-handed oppression, and hypocri- 
tical professions of love for freedom, it holds up 
before the nations its time-honored banner of 
genuine freedom. Yon know the efforts of 
Pius IX. and w^hy he failed. 



FREEDOM OF DISCUSSIOIT. 



You love liberty of speech ; the Catholic 
Church loves it no less. " In ncccssariis unitas, 
in duhiis libertas — Unity in things necessary, 
freedom in doubtful ones," is one of her oldest 
and most celebrated maxims. The Pope 
24 



266 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

decides no point of importance without first 
submitting it to the discussion of the Cardinals 
and men of learning. In Councils and Synods] 
the greatest freedom of speech prevails. At 
all times every Catholic is free to appeal from 
the decision of subordinate authorities to the 
Hol}^ See. Freedom of discussion is not, as 
you imagine, condemned by the Catholic 
Church. 

Mr. Baine very effectually refutes the charge 
that the Catholic Church is opposed to free 
institutions in general, and especially to the 
Constitution of this country. Appealing to the 
evidence of historical facts, he says, " We affirm, 
whenever the rights and liberties of any 
people, for fifteen hundred years, have been in 
jeopardy, by tyranny from any quarter where 
the Church has had any inffuence, that she and 
her children have exerted that influence on 
behalf of the oppressed and down-trodden, and 
in favor of liberty and against tyranny. We 
affirm more, and further, that the noblest 
charter of human rights that the world has 
ever seen wrested from tyranny and feudal 
institutions, within eighteen hundred years, 
was forced from a despot by the genius, 
courage, and learning of Catholics, under the 
auspices and encoui'agement of their spiritual 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 267 

Mother, the Church. And what is more still, 
ever}' principle of liberty in the American 
Constitution, which is declaratory of, and which 
conserves the liberties of the American people, 
is a literal transcript in substance, and almost 
in terms, from that Catholic charter of human 
rights of which we now speak. Every Ameri- 
can school-boy is familiar with the old renown 
of ' Magna Charta,' wrung from King John by 
barons of England. But if American Protest- 
ant school-boys were informed that these 
sturdy barons, who evinced so much pertina- 
cious courage, and political genius, and pro- 
found insight into the principles on which civil 
liberty depends, and upon which it now lives in 
the United States, were every one of them 
Catholics, these same boys would stare at you 
in blank amazement. They have been taught 
to reverence Magna Charta, and to denounce 
the Church as inimical to civil liberty, in the 
same breath. The same school-boy exercise 
that applauds the one to' the skies, denounces 
the other to the pit. A great wrong has been 
done, is doing, to the understanding and hearts 
of these youths, who are the men of to- 
morrow."* 

* Baine, p. 247. 



268 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

The history of the Catholic Church in all 
ages proves to evidence that she is with the 
people ; she lives, has always lived, in the very 
midst of the people. She is, and has always 
been, at home in all nations ; she sanctions all 
legitimate forms of government. Since the 
day of Pentecost, there has been no language 
which has not been the vernacular tongue of 
her children ; no form of civil institutions under 
which her children have not lived. 

If the accusation that the Catholic Church is 
hostile to civil freedom is founded on historical 
facts, nothing can be easier than to specify in 
what age, in what nation, under what circum- 
stances, the Catholic Church has destroyed 
human liberty or democratic forms of govern- 
ment. History disproves the charge. There 
is a little Republic in Italy, San Marino, the 
oldest Republic now existing, and the most 
unflinching and uncompromising advocate of 
democratic principles : that republic, which has 
enjoyed its independence for thirteen hundred 
years, is and has always been Catholic, and 
has been for centuries under the protection of 
the Pope. 

The Catholic Church is not hostile to your 
free and glorious institutions. You have 
nothing to fear from her. Nothing but misre- 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 2t)9 

presentation of her doctrine and discipline, 
could ever have engendered the belief that she 
wishes to undermine the republic. 

One beneficial result of the late Know- 
Nothing movement, which originated partly in 
a desire to injure the Catholic Religion, has 
been to draw the attention of many earnest 
American Protestants to our doctrines ; and 
the consequence has invariably been a favor- 
able opinion of the Catholic Church, and, in 
some cases, conversion to the Catholic faith. 
I may mention, as an instance, the conversion 
of the son of a Protestant minister at Toledo. 
Being present at a meeting-house on an occa- 
sion when the minister indulged in a violent 
invective against the Catholic Church, and 
represented her as the mother of abominations 
and a sink of reprobation, the young man felt 
convinced that the preacher v^as slandering 
her, and he resolved to discover the truth. He 
read, examined, compared, and the result was 
that he became a Catholic. His father, I 
learned, became a Catholic before him. 

It is a remarkable fact that Americans, when 
converted to the Catholic Church, are gene- 
rally among the most decided and practical 
Catholics. I heard this on my first arrival in 
America from a friend who had been long in 



270 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

the country and knew it well, and my experi- 
ence has convinced me of the correctness of his 
observations. Americans do not become 
nominal Catholics ; if thej^ have become con- 
verts at all, they are men of action and resolute 
will, setting a bright example of active and 
energetic faith to their fellow- Catholics. In 
view of this undeniable fact, a Roman journal, 
some time ago, expressed the opinion, that one 
of the most glorious enterprises for the Catho- 
lic Church to engage in at this day, is the con- 
version of the United States to the Catholic 
faith. If these pages contribute ever so little 
towards the accomplishment of the glorious 
undertaking, I shall be amply rewarded for my 
humble share in the labor. 

There are many among you who regard a 
change of religion as dishonorable and morally 
wrong. This is the most dangerous of all pre- 
judices, and the most unfounded. It cannot be 
dishonorable to renounce error for truth, to 
pass from a false Religion to the true one ; it 
cannot be wrong to fulfil the most important 
duty of man, that of rendering public testimony 
to the truth, and to serve God as He desires to 
be served. To renounce a false Religion and 
profess the true one, is the most honorable act 
you can perform. By leaving the sect in which 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 271 

you were born to become a member of the 
true Church, when you have become convinced 
of the validity of her claims, you give to God 
the honor which He has a strict right to reqmre 
of you, for you simply confess that God is 
Truth and can have revealed only one Reli- 
gion ; you honor Christ, for you solemnly 
acknowledge before the world that the only 
true Church is the Church founded by Him, 
and preached by His Apostles ; you honor the 
Church of Christ, because, in the face of public 
prejudice, and perhaps of persecution, you 
recognize her as His Church ; you honor your 
own understanding and heart, for you assert 
your independence, and trample under foot the 
ignominious principle that every one should 
remain in the Religion in which he happens to 
have been born, whether that Religion is true 
or false. 

It is astonishing that the principle, that 
every one ought to remain in his own Religion, 
should ever have been accepted or advanced. 
On all other subjects a widely different prin- 
ciple is the general rule of human conduct ; 
men universally aim at the best. Is Religion 
so worthless that we need not care whether it 
is true or false ? No greater recklessness can 
be imagined than indifference to the question, 



272 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

of the truth or falsehood of Religion. The 
question is inseparably connected with salva- 
tion ; Religion, in its very nature, is the only- 
way of salvation, and, as 1 have shown, there 
can be but one true Religion, but one which 
can lead a man to heaven. 

What would you say of a traveler who goes 
South when his destination is North, and 
refuses to retrace his steps after he has dis- 
covered his error ; and who in spite of guide- 
posts and positive information from persons 
thoroughly acquainted with the country, keeps 
on in the wrong direction, consoling himself 
with the idea that one road is as good as 
another ? Is his conduct reasonable, especially 
if the future happiness of his whole life depend 
upon his journey ? 

If a man born blind and lame could be cured, 
we should think him mad were he to say to 
the physician, I should like well enough to be 
cured, but then I was born as I am, and my 
father was blind and lame as well as I ; I 
will not take the trouble requisite for my cure. 
It would be madness in a sick person to be 
satisfied with any medicine, simply because it 
is a medicine. A physician died, leaving a 
large number of recipes. The heir, who had 
never studied medicine, hung out his sign- 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 273 

board as a physician. When applied to, he 
used to take out at random and copy one of 
the recipes in his possession, and give it with 
the remark that it must be a very good pre- 
scription, for it had been left him by an 
eminent physician. The man who believes 
every religious quack that sets up a new Reli- 
gion, is as reckless and mad as any of the 
madmen I have described. 

If the principle that every one should 
remain in his own Religion is sound, why did 
Christ establish His Church and send His 
Apostles to convert the nations ? If your 
reasoning holds good, the Jews and the Gen- 
tiles had a right to reject the new Religion, 
and say that they wished to retain their old 
one ; Christianity could never have been pro- 
pagated, and we should be heathens at the 
present day. 

The principle is wrong. Whoever discovers 
that he is in a false Religion, is bound to 
abandon it for the true. By doing so, he only 
fulfils an essential duty, the first and most 
important of all the duties which the creature 
owes to his Creator, the duty of submitting to 
the will of God without regard to inconveni- 
ence, affliction, or persecution. 

Some among you who have received Con- 



274 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

firmation in Protestant sects, are greatly dis- 
turbed at the thought of a change of Religion, 
looking upon it as a culpable breach of the 
oath they have taken to remain Protestants, 
Their fears are groundless ; unlawful oaths are 
not binding. No one will say that Herod was 
obliged by his oath to give the head of John 
the Baptist to the daughter of Herodias. God 
cannot accept an oath which is contrary to 
truth or justice. Were you to take an oath to 
deliver your soul up to Satan, do you think the 
oath would be binding ? Can you oblige 
yourself by oath to resist the inspirations of 
the Holy Ghost and reject the truth ? The 
oath taken at a Protestant Confirmation, if it 
has any force, obliges you to become Catholics. 
If it has any lawful meaning, it means that you 
bind yourself to remain a Protestant only^ 
because you believe Protestantism to be true 
Christianity ; therefore if you discover that the 
Catholic Church is the only true Church, and 
that you cannot be a true Christian except by 
becoming a Catholic, your oath, if binding, 
obliges you to become a member of the Catho- 
lic Church. Suppose you had taken an oath 
to regard a bank bill as genuine and to pass it 
as such, would you be obliged to keep your 
oath, if, on attempting to pass the note, you 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 275 

discover that it is counterfeit? Would you 
not be glad to exchange it for a good one, if 
any one should, of his own accord, make 
the offer? You ought to be exceedingly 
thankful to God for having discovered the 
falsehood of Protestantism, and being able to 
leave it for the true Church. 

To become a Catholic is simply to return to 
the truth from which Luther departed. A con- 
vert from Protestantism, if asked why he 
changed his Religion and became a Catholic, 
may answer that he did so because Luther 
himself was a Catholic ; he may say. Ask 
Luther why he changed, I have only returned 
to the truth. This was Count Stolberg'a 
answer to the King of Prussia, who had 
remarked to him, that he did not like people 
who changed their Religion. " Neither do I like 
them, sire," was the reply ; " If Luther had not 
changed, I should have had no occasion to do 
what I have done ; I have only returned to the 
first Church." *' It is a shame," says St. 
Augustine, " to change one's opinion if it is 
right and true, but to change a false and dan- 
gerous opinion is praiseworthy and useful. As 
fortitude does not allow a man to become 
depraved, so obstinacy does not allow him to 



276 PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 

amend : as the former is praiseworthy, so the 
latter should be corrected."* 

One great obstacle to conversion is public 
opinion. To become a Catholic is simply to 
perform a duty on which happiness in time 
and eternity depends ; yet hundreds who are 
convinced that the Catholic Church is tbe only 
true Church of Christ, are prevented by fear of 
censure from following their convictions. They 
fear displeasing their relations ; they dread the 
opinion of the world, and choose to please 
men, rather than obey God. They choose to 
incur the dreadful denunciations of Christ : 
" Whosoever shall confess me before men, I 
will also confess him before my Father, who is 
in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me 
before men, I .will also deny him before my 

Father, who is in heaven He that 

loveth father or mother more than me, is not 
worthy of me; and he that loveth son or 
daughter more than me, is not worthy of me."f 
They determine to expose themselves to the 
eternal anger of God, sooner than incur the 
displeasure or censure of men. The fear of 
blame is the rock on which the noblest hearts 
have suffered eternal shipwreck. 

* St. Aug. Epist. ad Celer. 
t Matt., X. 32. seq. 



PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 277 

Why should you fear taking a step for 
which you can assign the best of reasons ? 
Why should you fear the opinion of men, parti- 
cularly in this country ? You boast of freedom 
of conscience and Religion ; but what sort of 
iVeedom is that which prevents you from follow- 
ing your convictions, and holds you enchained 
ill the fetters of education, habit, and public 
opinion? Liberty, if it is worth anything, 
ought to make you bold enough to acknowledge 
no judge of conscience except God. 

So far I have addressed Protestants ; but a 
great number of Americans profess no Religion 
whatever, and are simply infidels. I have to 
address them also, not only because I am per- 
suaded that many of them are not hostile to the 
truth if it is once clearly presented to them, but 
also because the order of m)^ argument leads 
me to the discussion of Infidelity, as it is the 
ultimate consequence of Protestantism. 



CHAPTER IV. 



IJSTFIDELITY; 

OE, THE ULTIMATE CONSEQUENCE OF 

PROTESTANTISM. 



I CALL Infidelity the last logical consequence 
of Protestantism, and I have a right to do so. 
There are Infidels in Catholic countries, but 
they are not Infidels in consequence of the 
Catholic Rule of Faith ; Infidelity cannot be 
deduced from the principle of infallible autho- 
rity in matters of Faith. But Protestantism by 
asserting the Private Interpretation of the 
Bible as the only Rule of Faith, renders faith 
impossible, and .gives a clear right to believe 
nothing that is beyond the sphere of natural 

278 



INFIDELITY ; ETC 279 

truth, since no certainty in relation to super- 
natural truth can be arrived at by the Private 
Interpretation of the Bible. 

The remarks which I have to make in this 
chapter, are addressed to Infidels, no matter 
whence or how their Infidelity may have arisen ; 
if they will only read and reflect for a single 
hour, they will be forced to acknowledge that 
Infidelity is self-contradictory. My reasoning 
shall be brief, as the nature of a popular dis- 
cussion demands, but it will be conclusive. 
However, I address myself to those only who 
are acquainted with history, and capable of 
following a course of logical reasoning. 

I will place before you seven conclusive argu- 
ments, each of them so conclusive, indeed, that 
you must either admit them all in succession, 
and thus be led to recognize the infallible autho- 
rity of the Catholic Church, or be at war with 
reason. 



280 INFIDELlT5f } OR, THE LAST 



SECTION I. 



INFIDELITY KEFUTEB. 

FIRST CONCLUSWE ARGUMENT. ' 

THE UNDEN'IABLE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 

There is a God, this is the first in the series 
oftruthstobe proved to Infidels. There is a God; 
to deny it, is to contradict human reason. If 
3'ou look at this world, not like a dumb animal, 
but with the eye of reason, you must confess 
that there is a God. If there is no God, how 
did the world originate ? If you deny the 
existence of God, you must say, either that 
nothing produced the world out of nothing, or 
that it has existed from eternity ; but either 
assertion clearly involves a contradiction. 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 2^1 

To say that nothing produced the world out 
of nothing, is not only absurd, but too ludicrous 
to call for a serious refutation. Where nothing 
acts upon nothing, nothing must be the result 
for all eternity. 

Father Kircher, the celebrated Roman astro- 
nomer and philosopher, had a friend who was 
a thorough-going Infidel, but admired him for 
his genius and learning. Father Kircher one 
day showed him a beautiful miniature globe. 
" Who made it ?" inquired the Infidel. " Why," 
answered Father Kircher, " nobody made it. 
Last night it came into existence out of nothing, 
and I found it in my room this morning." 
" Do you mean to make a fool of me ?" asked 
his friend, not a little nettled. " Then you 
believe," said the father, " that no one but a 
fool could imagine that this globe came into 
existence out of nothing of its own accord ; 
and yet you believe that the whole universe, of 
which this little globe is but a small repre- 
sentation, started into being without a Creator. 
Is not this idea a thousand times more extra- 
vagant than the other ?" 

" You cannot find a hut in the woods," says 
Cicero, " without concluding that some one was 



282 INFIDELITY ; OR, THE LAST 

there to build it ; and you look at this universe, 
its grandeur, and harmony, and yet pretend 
that no one made it !" 

If you say that there is no need of a Creator, 
because the world has existed from eternity, 
you fall into an absurdity no less glaring. 
Wherever there is number, there can be no 
infinity, for numbers can always be increased ; 
and where there is no infinity, there must 
be a beginning, and consequently no eternity. 
But there is number in the world ; everything 
in it is changeable ; every object in it is in 
motion ; and changes and motions ma}^ be 
computed or numbered. To-day is a day 
added to yesterday. If the world were eternal, 
days would have existed from eternity, these 
would be an infinite number, which is a 
palpable absurdity, for to any number we can 
always add unity. Days cannot have existed 
without a first day, in the same manner that a 
chain cannot exist without a first link : an 
infinite number of days, is as absurd as a chain 
with an infinite number of links, and no first 
link. As certain as it is that to-day is a day 
more than yesterday, and that time is time, so 
certain it is that the world had a beginning, 
that there is a Creator, who is eternal, that 
there is a God. 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 283 



SECOND CONCLUSIVE ARGUJ^IENT. 
THE UNDENIABLE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 

The immortality of the soul, is as certain as 
the existence of God. Our existence had a 
beginning, but it will have no end ; eternity 
awaits us. To assert the contrary involves a 
contradiction. 

Our immortality is as certain as God's 
existence. God is free; He could create me, 
or not create me, as He pleased, but having 
created me a reasonable being, he could not 
have created my soul mortal. To create a 
reasonable soul mortal, would be in contradic- 
tion to His justice and goodness, and to the 
nature of a spiritual being such as the human 
soul ; and being in contradiction to the justice 
and goodness of God, it implies a denial of his 
existence, for His existence is essential justice 
and goodness. 

God has created me either for happiness or 
misery ; if for misery. He is cruel, and I am 
not bound to return thanks to Him for my 
creation. If He has created me for happiness, 
and yet deprives me of it without any fault of 



284 infidelity; or, the last 

mine, by annihilating my soul, then His cruelty 
is still greater, and I am still less obliged to 
thank Him. There is no greater misfortune, 
as Cicero has remarked, than to be in the enjoy- 
ment of happiness and to know that it will 
soon be over. The greater the happiness, the 
more painful is the loss of it ; the greater the 
bliss which a man enjoys, and the longer the 
enjoyment lasts, the greater would be his 
misery were he to discover that he is to be 
annihilated. He might justly say to his 
Creator, Thou hast made me, and made me 
happy ; why dost thou deprive me of my 
existence ? I do not thank thee for having 
created me ; infinitely better had it been for 
me never to have existed, than to have been 
created for annihilation. Such language is 
blasphemy, and still, were our souls not im- 
mortal, it would be just. 

I do not speak here of those who offend God 
mortally, and thus incur eternal punishment 
through their own fault ; I only argue against 
those who assert that the soul is not immortal, 
and yet grant that it is capable of happiness. 
God cannot annihilate the human soul, because 
He cannot contradict Himself. 

To say that the soul is mortal, is in contra- 
diction likewise to the nature of a spiritual 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 285 

being. A spirit has no parts, a body is com- 
posed of parts : if the soul were a material 
substance, it might be destroyed, for all mate- 
rial substances can be dissolv^ed ; but being a 
spirit, it is incapable of dissolution, it can only 
be annihilated. Only infinite Power can anni- 
hilate a being, for the same power is required 
for annihilation as for creation, and only in- 
finite Power can create, or call forth creatures 
out of nothing. God will not annihilate the 
human soul, for, as I have shown, to annihilate 
it would contradict His infinite perfections. 

To say that the soul is a material substance 
or body, is absurd and ridiculous. The soul is 
a thinking principle ; thought is its effect. 
There can be no effect without an adequate 
cause ; the effect cannot be greater than the 
cause, nor of a nature opposite to the cause. 
If the soul is a material substance, there would 
exist an effect of a higher nature than the 
cause, for the soul, the thinking principle, would 
be essentially inferior to its effect, thought ; 
thought is immaterial, while the soul w^ould be 
material. Thought, as every one is conscious, 
is a simple act ; therefore the principle of 
thought, the soul, must be simple. If the soul 
is material, the thinking principle and its effect 



286 infidelity; or, the last 

are of opposite natures, which clearly involvea 
a contradiction. 

As this reasoning may be too metaphysical 
for some of my readers, I shall endeavor to put 
it in a more intelligible form. Bodies have 
shape, color, weight, size : if the soul is a 
material substance, its thoughts, wishes, affec- 
tions, must be of the same nature, and have 
the same properties as bodies ; but to assign 
measure, weight, color, shape to thoughts, is so 
ridiculous, that no materialist could attempt to 
do so, without bursting into a laugh at his own 
folly. I ask you, boldest of materialists, can 
you imagine a thought weighing a pound or an 
ounce ; a thought a foot or half a foot in length or 
thickness ; a yellow, orange, or red thought ; a 
square, round, or triangular thought ; a thought 
that smells like the rose, or has the sound of 
brass ? The theory of materialists is ridicul- 
ous. 

If the soul is not material, it cannot die ; it 
can only be annihilated ; but annihilation is an 
act of God's omnipotence, and God does not 
wish to annihilate His infinite perfection. The 
immortality of the soul, therefore, is as certain 
as the existence of God, as certain as the 
existence of human reason. 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 287 



THIRD CONCLUSIVE ARGUMENT. 



THE UNDENIABLE NECESSITY OF RELIGION. 



If there is a God and we are immortal, then 
there must be a Religion ; to say the contrary 
implies a contradiction. The existence of 
God, our reason, and immortality, are neces- 
sarily the foundation of duties, on the fulfil- 
ment or non-fulfilment of which our eternal 
destiny depends ; this is Religion. Whatever 
God creates, He creates for an end ; else he 
would act without Wisdom, and would not be 
God ; therefore man is created for an end. 
Every object in the universe has its laws; 
therefore man has law^s, which bind his will, 
and by which he must regulate his conduct, in 
order to attain the end for which he is created. 
Those laws constitute Religion : Religion is the 
bond that unites us to God as our Creator and 
Lord; it embodies truths to be believed, and 
duties to be performed ; it is as certain as 
God's existence, as certain as our reason and 
free-will. 



288 infidelity; or, the last 



FOURTH CONCLUSIVE ARGUMENT. 
THE UNDENIABLE NECESSITY OF REVELATION. 

With the question of Religion, arises the 
question whether man needs a Revelation. 
Can man discover the truths and duties of 
Religion by the unaided light of reason ? or 
does he stand in need of a Divine Revelation 
for the purpose ? That there is a Religion is 
self-evident ; that we owe certain duties to 
God, and that those duties have a connection 
with our future destiny, clearly follows from 
the first principles of reason. But is it enough 
for us to know and practise only what we can 
discover by the light of reason without any 
supernatural Ileve\3,tioii? Is man, without the 
aid of Revelation, able to answer satisfactorily 
the fundamental questions. What is God ? 
Whence do we come ? What will be our 
destiny hereafter ? What becomes of the soul 
after death? What is the origin of moral evil, 
and of our inclination to evil ? When man has 
sinned, does there remain for him any hope of 
salvation, and on what conditions? What does 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 289 

God demand of us, as a necessary condition of 
our eternal happiness ? I ask, Is it possible 
for reason, unenlightened by Revelation, to give 
to these questions, a distinct, precise, complete, 
and unnerring answer? Every man's con- 
sciousness and the experience of all ages show 
that it is impossible. 

With regard to the nature of God, there is 
no doubt, that in all times and places, men 
could by the light of reason alone, come to 
the knowledge of God. As a matter of fact, 
however, they did not generally rise to that 
knowledge. Every one knows how erroneous 
were the ideas men had of the Deity during 
the long ages which preceded the coming of 
Christ, and what wrong ideas are still enter- 
tained on this point among the tribes and 
nations that have not as yet received the light 
of the Gospel. But even supposing that all 
men did recognize God as God, still, what 
could they or did they know, by human rea- 
son alone, of their relation to Him, of their 
future destiny, or of the other questions to 
which I have referred ? On those questions 
reason either is silent, or gives a doubtful, 
unsatisfactory answer. Yet to all those funda- 
mental questions man has a right to ask a 

clear and satisfactory answer ; that right is 
2f) 



290 infidelity; or, the last 

given him by the wisdom and justice of God. 
He has no right to prescribe the manner in 
which God should manifest His will ; he has 
no right to demand a supernatural destiny ; 
but he has an inalienable right to know his 
destiny whatever it may be, and to have the 
means of attaining it placed within his reach. 
There are now a thousand millions of men in 
the world, God's creatures, every one of whom 
has a right to ask, and insist on being answered, 
why he is on this earth ; what God requires of 
him ; what destiny awaits him in another 
world ; what he must do to expiate his sins ; 
what he must do, in order to secure his eternal 
felicity. There is not a man on earth, capable 
of reflection, who can find any real repose of 
mind or heart, until these questions are dis- 
tinctly and fully answered : not to desire an 
answer, is to place oneself in opposition to the 
most urgent requirements of reason. 

On those questions reason alone can give no 
clear answer. To be convinced of this, pro- 
pose the questions to an Infidel, who takes 
reason alone for his guide. He cannot solve 
them, nor give a single satisfactory answer. 
His own desire to penetrate the mystery that 
enshrouds the future world, is so irresistible, 
that it leads him to evoke the dead, and give 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 291 

credit to the revelations of Table-Turning and 
Spirit-Rapping. This alone is enough to show 
that the longing to be acquainted with the 
mysteries of another life, exercises so complete 
an empire over the soul, that rather than not 
know anything about them, man is ready to 
believe in false or diabolical revelations. 



FIFTH CONCLUSIVE ARGUMENT. 
THE UNDENIABLY DIVINE MISSION OF CHRIST. 

Man has a right to inquire whether God has 
actually made a Revelation. Whether Reve- 
lation is necessary or not, it is certain that 
man has a right to ask whether there exists a 
Divine Revelation ; whether God has spoken 
to men, or sent a messenger from heaven to 
reveal His will, to explain the mysteries of our 
destiny, to instruct us in our duties, and 
acquaint us with the conditions on which our 
eternal happiness depends. 

To the question, whether God has made a 
Revelation, history answers that He has done 
so ; that for many ages, at different periods, 
there arose men who claimed to have received 



292 infidelity; or, the last 

a Divine Revelation, and to teach a Divinely 
revealed Religion. The Egyptian Priests, the 
Persian Zoroaster, Numa Pompilius, Confucius, 
Mahomet, and others, pretended that their 
Religion was revealed. Moses proclaimed that 
God himself had given him the Law; the 
Jewish prophets foretold the future in the name 
of God : their mission was preparatory to that 
of Christ. Christ proclaimed Himself the Son 
of God, and that the Father had sent Him to 
teach mankind the Divine Will. 

I suppose you are sufficiently acquainted 
with history to know, that the ancient Egyptian, 
Roman, Persian, and Chinese founders of Reli- 
gions, never proved the validity of their mis- 
sion. It is not so with Christ. 

The whole argument for the Divinity of the 
Mission of Christ, turns on this single question, 
Was Christ in reality what He proclaimed 
himself to be ? 

In our times Infidels such as Strauss, Feuer- 
bach, and their disciples, have labored hard 
and long to show that Christ was not even an 
historical personage, but a mere myth. They 
have labored in vain. God has placed the 
evidences of the existence of Christ, of His Mis- 
sion and His miracles, beyond the reach of 
successful attack. The historical existence of 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 293 

Christ is testified to in all ages by His heredi- 
tary enemies, the Jews. Divine Providence 
has allowed the ancient Persians, Egyptians, 
Romans to disappear from the face of the 
earth ; but the Jews, the weakest of all the 
ancient nations, have survived the wreck of 
all the empires of antiquity, and will survive to 
the end of time. In vain, while they exist, 
does the sophist argue against the existence 
of Christ : by their presence in all ages, by their 
dispersion over all countries, the Jews are 
witnesses easily appealed to, and whose testi- 
mony is conclusive against him. They hold 
in their hands the prophecies describing His 
coming, His life, His sufferings, ages before His 
appearance on earth. The existence of the 
Jews is a living monument of His existence, 
their hatred an invincible proof of the his- 
torical truth of Christianity. While the 
Jews exist, and the Old Testament is in their 
hands, the Infidel has no hope of success ; they 
meet him everywhere, and destroy the labori- 
ous fabric of his fallacies by the disinterested 
testimony of their hatred. Their anxiety for 
the genuineness of the Old Testament, renders 
interpolation or corruption of the text impos- 
sible ; they have counted its letters, they can 



294 infidelity; or, the last 

tell how oftea each letter occurs, and which is 
the first, middle one, and last. 

In the prophetic books of the Jews we have, 
as Bossuet remarks, the history of Christ as 
clearly related as in the Gospels. The prophecy 
of Daniel, for instance, describes the precise 
time of His coming, foretells His rejection by 
the Jews^ the destruction of the Temple and 
the city ; it is so decisive that the Rabbis 
have pronounced a curse on the Jew who 
should attempt to explain it. The Jews are 
not only unimpeachable witnesses of the 
genuineness of the prophecies; their jealousy is 
an evident proof of the prophecies that relate 
to Christ. The Jews place the historical 
existence of Christ beyond the possibility of 
doubt. 

An Infidel once told me, that having had 
the curiosity to visit a Synagogue, his atten- 
tion was arrested by the tablets of the law dis- 
played on the wall. " I shuddered at the 
sight," he said, " and I asked myself, What if 
all that is taught by the Catholic Church were 
true?" The whole series of ancient prophecies 
must have flashed across his mind, together 
with their obvious accomplishment in Christ. 
If the prophecies inspire you with fear, it is 
your own fault : believe, and the promises of 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 295 

faith, instead of terrifying you, will be your 
greatest consolation. 

The Divine Mission of Christ is evident, not 
only from the prophecies, but from His own 
professions^ confirmed by His life, His doctrine, 
His miracles, and particularly by the miracle 
of His Resurrection : from all these the 
Divinity of His Mission is as clear as the sun 
at mid -day. 

The Divinity of His Mission is evident from 
His own professions. " This is life everlast- 
ing," He said, " that they may know Thee, the 
only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou 
hast sent."* The Samaritan woman said to 
Jesus, " I know that the Messias cometh (who 
is called Christ) ; therefore when He is come, 
He will tell us all things. Jesus saith to her : 
I am He, who am speaking with thee."f 
Christ affirms that He is the Messiah, the Son 
of God, the One sent for our Redemption; He 
affirms it in the presence of His Apostles : 
" Je»3us saith to them : But whom do you say 
that I am ? Simon Peter answering said : 
Thou art Christ the Son of the living God." 

* John, xvii. 3. 
t John, iv. 25, 26. 
X Matt., xvi. 15, 16. 



296 infidelity; or, the last 

Christ did not deny it, but confirmed him 
in His belief: " Blessed art thou, Simon 
Bar-Jona : because flesh and blood have not 
revealed it to thee, but my Father w^ho is in 
heaven. And I say to thee : That thou art 
Peter, and upon this rock I will build my 
Church ; and the gates of hell shall not prevail 
against it."* Christ made the same profes- 
sions in public. He asked the man who had 
been born blind, " Dost thou believe in the Son 
of God ? He answered and said : Who is He, 
Lord, that I may believe in Him ? And Jesus 
said to him : Thou hast both seen Him, and it 
is He who talketh with thee. And he said : I 
believe, Lord. And falling down he adored 
Him."f Christ permitted the adoration. He 
made the same professions in presence of His 
deadly enemies : " Amen, amen, I say to you, 
before Abraham was made, I am."J " I and 
the Father are one."§ " He that seeth me, 
seeth Him that sent me."|| When Jesus had 
said, " I and the Father are one," " the Jews 
took up stones to stone Him. Jesus answered 

* Ibid. 17, 18. 
f John, ix. 35. seq. 
X John, viii. 58. 
§ John, X. 30. 
II John, xii. 45, 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 29 



•7 



them : Many good works I have shown to you 
from the Father : for which of those works do 
you stone me ? The Jews answered Hinj ; 
For a good 'work we stone thee not, but for 
blasphemy : and because that Thou, being a 
man, makest Thyself God. Jesus answered 
them . . . If I do not the works of my 
Father, believe me not. But if I do, though 
you will not believe me, believe the works, that 
you may know and believe that the Father is 
in me, and I in the Father."* 

Taking these professions in connection with 
the whole history of Christ, we find them 
proved by His life, His doctrine. His miracles, 
His death, His Resurrection. 

1. The Life of Christ. — Christ could say 
before His enemies, " Which of you shall con- 
vince me of sin ?"t and no one came forward 
to prove a single accusation against Him. 
Among the most violent enemies of Christian- 
ity that have ever existed, hardly a single one 
has been bold enough to bring a charge 
against the character of Christ. If any have 
accused Him, they were of that class of reck- 
less blasphemers who directed their insults 

* John, X. 30-38. 
I John, viii. 46. 

27 



298 INFIDELITY ; OR, THE LAST 

against God Himself. Even Voltaire and 
Rousseau admired the wonderful greatness of 
the virtues of Christ ; Rousseau confessed that 
if the death of Socrates was that of a wise 
man, the death of Christ was that of a God. 

It is the fashion of modern Infidels to place 
Christ amongst the greatest and wisest of man- 
kind, and to call Him a hero of virtue. But in 
doing so they contradict themselves. Jesus is 
either what He claimed to be, true God and 
true Man, or else He was the greatest impostor 
the world has ever seen, and you have no 
right to call Him a great, wise, or virtuous 
man. If Christ was not the true Son of God, 
sent by the Father for the redemption of the 
world; then, as Lessing has justly remarked, 
Mahomet himself has not deceived the w^orld 
half as much as He, and is a far better man. 
Mahomet only claimed to be a prophet, a man 
invested with extraordinary powers ; Christ 
proclaimed Himself to be God, and allowed 
Himself to be adored. A mere man who pre- 
tends to be God, and permits himself to be 
adored, and leads millions of men into idolatry 
age after age, has no claim to be called wise or 
virtuous. To imagine one's self a God, is 
madness ; to demand universal adoration, with- 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 299 

out any title to it, stamps the man who attempts 
it, if he is not insane, as the vilest impostor 
and the greatest malefactor that can be con- 
ceived. Christ is either truly God, or you have 
to say that He is the worst of men. 

2. The Doctrine of Christ is in harmony 
with the Divine mission which He claimed to 
have received. " Never," said the Jews, " did 
nnan speak like this man."* Centuries have 
gone by since then, and it is still true that no 
man has ever spoken as He spoke. Read the 
Gospels. I do not here urge them as in- 
spired, but only as historical records of the 
actions and doctrine of Christ, and as worthy 
of credit as the most faithful of ancient or 
modern annals. Is not the doctrine which is 
inculcated in the Gospel, though constituting 
but a portion of the teachings of Christ, such as 
we might expect from a messenger of Heaven ? 
Men could never have invented it. You can- 
not name a book, unless its contents be derived 
from the Gospels, which instructs in so 
authoritative a manner, and imparts instruction 
so pure and hol}'^; none that, however fre- 
quently it may be read, retains so well its 

* John, vii. 46. 



300 infidelity; or, the last 

original freshness, and its primitive impress of 
superhuman sanctity. The doctrine of the 
Gospels bears the stamp of its origin, the sea. 
of its Divine author ; it is always new, it is 
unalterable like God from whom it came. 
Other works weary by repeated perusal ; the 
Gospels are always interesting, always in- 
vigorating to the soul, always brilliant and 
spotless like the sun. 

3. Miracles of Christ. — The Divine mission 
and the doctrine of Christ are confirmed by 
an infinite number of miracles. Jesus was 
able to say to the disciples of John the Baptist, 
" Go and relate to John what you have heard 
and seen. The blind see, the lame walk, the 
lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise 
again."* Christ appeals to His miracles in 
presence of His enemies, before whom He had 
wrought them, and who could not deny them, 
and did not attempt to deny them. The chief 
Priests and Pharisees said, " What do we, for 
this man doeth many miracles ?"f They said 
so on occasion of the raising of Lazarus from 
the dead. They did not pretend that Lazarus 

* John, xi. 4, 5. 
"t John, xi. 47. 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 301 

was only apparently dead ; they knew that, 
when he was raised to life, he had been buried 
for four days, and was in a state of decompo- 
sition. The power of Christ was so universally 
known, that the Jewish historian, Josephus, 
does not hesitate to call Him " a man mighty 
in working miracles." 

4. The PROPHECIES of Christ are as well 
authenticated as His miracles. He foretold, 
among other things, the ruin of Jerusalem, the 
propagation of the Gospel, and the perpetuity 
of the Church which He founded. 

5. Death of Christ. — Christ laid down His 
life in testimony of His Divine mission : He 
had proclaimed Himself the Son of God, and 
sealed His words with His blood on Golgotha. 
Caiphas the high-priest said to Him, " I adjure 
Thee by the living G*Bd, that thou tell us if 
Thou be Christ the Son of God. Jesus saith to 
him, I am. Nevertheless, I say to you. Here- 
after 3"ou shall see the Son of man sitting on 
the right hand of the power of God, and com- 
ing in the clouds of heaven. Then the high- 
priest rent his garments, saying : He hath 
blasphemed : what further need have we of 
witnesses ? Behold now you have heard the 



302 infidelity; or, the last 

blasphemy : what think you ? But they an- 
swering, said : He is guilty of death."* He^ 
was accused before Pilate of having called 
Himself the Son of God : " We have a law, and 
according to the law He ought to die ; because 
He made Himself the Son of God."t It was 
the strict and solemn duty of Christ, if He had 
been misunderstood, to explain His meaning. 
He was adjured to do so in the name of the 
living God ; He owed it to truth and Religion, 
for, if He was not God, He became the cause 
of idolatry to all His followers. Instead of giv- 
ing any explanation. He repeated what He had 
said, and enforced it by referring to the last 
judgment and announcing that He himself 
would appear in the heavens to judge the 
world. It was universally known that He 
claimed to be the Son of God ; while He was 
hanging on the Cross, the people said in deri- 
sion, " If thou be the Son of God, come down 
from the Cross. "J The centurion and his 
soldiers who were on guard near the Cross, 
when they saw the sun darkened, and felt the 
earth shaking under their feet, cried out in 
terror, " Indeed this was the Son of God."§ 



* Matt., xxvi. 63-66 ; Mark, xiv. 62. 
t Luke, xix. 7. 
J Matt., xxvii. 54. 
§ Matt., xxvii. 54. 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 303 

6. The Resurrection. — The Divinity of the 
Mission of Christ, was fully established by His 
Resurrection. That unheard of event was first 
announced at Jerusalem by the guard which 
had been placed around the sepulchre. When 
it was preached for the first time by St. Peter 
on Pentecost, several thousands at once became 
Christians, among whom, as the Acts testify, 
there were a large number of Jewish priests. 
In the ranks of the Jewish priests were found 
the bitterest enemies of Christ, and they would 
never have become His followers, had not the 
miracle of His Resurrection been proved be- 
yond all reasonable doubt. The Resurrection 
was the great argument that converted the 
heathen world. Nothing except its unques- 
tionable truth could have induced the Apostles 
to announce it, or the priests of the Jews to 
believe it, or the proud heathens of Greece and 
Rome to renounce the lax morality of idolatry 
for the severe laws of the Gospel. No candid 
man who examines without prejudice the 
evidences of Christ's Divine Mission, can doubt 
for a moment, that He really was what He 
claimed to be, the Son of God, and consequently 
that His doctrines are Divine. 



304 infidelity; or, the last 



SIXTH CONCLUSIVE ARGUMENT. 



THE UNDENIABLE DISSIMILAEITY OE THE CHURCH 
OF CHRIST TO ANY PURELY HUMAN INSTITU- 
TION. 



Whoever believes in Christ, must believe 
what His Church teaches. Every proof that 
establishes the Divinity of Christ, demonstrates 
the Divine truth of His Church. 

That there is no similarity between the 
Church of Christ and any purely human insti- 
tution that has ever existed or can exist, is 
evident from what I have said in this work on 
the marks of the Church. As it is unnecessary 
to repeat what has been sufficiently demon- 
strated, I shall direct your attention, in this 
place, to one point only, the foundation of the 
Church and the miraculous propagation of the 
Gospel. 

Every man who knows what was the condi- 
tion of the world at the time when the Apostles 
went forth on their mission, will admit that the 
propagation of the Gospel is of itself alone an 
evident proof of the divinity of the Church of 
Christ. The world, as St. Augustine argues, 



\ 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 305 

was converted to Christianity either by miracle, 
or without miracle : if the world was converted 
by miracle, our faith is divine ; if without 
miracle, then the conversion itself is the 
greatest miracle that was ever wrought. The 
reasoning of St. Augustine is unanswerable. 

St. Justin, in his argument for the Christian 
Religion, drew the attention of his countrymen 
to the gigantic obstacles which the faith had to 
encounter. He argued that a Roman citizen, 
before becoming a Christian, had to make so 
many sacrifices that it was impossible for him 
to be converted except upon irresistible evi- 
dence. " Reflect," he says, " that we were not 
born Christians. We lived long enough among 
you ; we attended with you the philosophical 
lectures of your academies. Before becoming 
Christians we examined the matter earnestly 
and thoroughly ; nothing but the weight of 
undeniable, evident truth could have impelled 
us to do what we did in becoming Christians." 

The same thing might be repeated to you at 
the present day by those who left your ranks to 
become Catholics. They might say. You knew 
us intimately, and you are our witnesses that 
without the most decisive evidence we should 
never have become Catholics. Let this be a 
warning to you not to pass lightly over the 



306 infidelity; or, the last 

claims of the Catholic Church : before rejecting 
them, examine them in earnest. 

The Divinity of the Church of Christ is 
undeniable, as I have proved when speaking 
of the marks of the Church. The only ques- 
tion that now remains to be settled is, Which 
is the Church of Jesus Christ. 



SEVENTH CONCLUSIVE ARGUMENT. 



THE UNDENIABLE AXIOM OF SAINT AMBROSE— 
"WHERE PETER IS, THERE IS THE CHURCH." 



The irresistible force of this axiom has been 
proved in the second chapter of this work. As 
surely as Christ said to Peter, " Thou art 
Peter, and upon this rock I will build my 
Church; I will give to thee the keys of the 
Kingdom of Heaven ; feed my lambs, feed my 
sheep:" as surely as Pius IX. is the lineal suc- 
cessor of St. Peter, so certain it is that no 
Church has any claim to the title of Catholic, 
except the Church which is in communion with 
the successors of Peter, the Roman Catholic 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 307 

Church. I have proved above that any separ- 
ation from her, any change in her doctrine, and 
any possibility of such a change, are all equally 
inadmissible, absurd, insulting to the Divine 
authority and truth of Christ. 

You have to determine whether you will 
follow St. Peter and his successors, or such 
men as Simon Magus, i^rius, Macedonius, 
Eut^'ches, Nestorius, Pelagius, and the rest of 
the founders of schism and inventors of heresy 
down to Saint-Simon and Joe Smith. 



The seven points which I have thus briefly 
discussed, must necessarily lead every Infidel 
who is candid, and capable of reasoning logic- 
ally, to acknowledge that man wants a Divinely 
revealed Religion and consequently faith ; that 
this Divinely revealed Religion is the only 
means by which he can reach his eternal 
destiny; that of all Religions and Churches 
which claim a supernatural or Divine origin, 
the only really Divine Religion, is the Roman 
Catholic Church. That Religion every man 
must admit, that Church every man must enteu, 
if he wishes to save his soul. The proofs I 



308 infidelity; or, the last 

have offered are obvious and irrefutable. You 
must either admit them, or fall into absurdities. 

Have you ever seen the suspension bridge 
near the Niagara Falls ? Which would you 
prefer, to cross the bridge and reach the oppo- 
site shore, or to throw yourselves headlong into 
the troubled waters of the foaming cataract? 
You would deem the man insane who should 
seriousl}^ ask you such a question. Now each 
of my arguments places you in a similar situ- 
ation. Either you must follow the logical train 
of my reasoning, and pass on from argument 
to argument to the final conclusion, or you 
must cast yourselves into an abyss of self- 
contradiction and absurdity. 

I have only a few remarks to add, in answer 
to some of the common objections of Infidels 
against Divine faith and against the authority 
of the Christian Revelation. 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 309 



SECTION II. 



OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 



The first objection of unbelievers, and one of 
the strongest obstacles to their admission of 
the claims of the Catholic Church, is the 
incomprehensibility of several articles of faith. 
The incomprehensibility of an article of faith, 
is no valid objection against it ; on the contrary, 
precisely because we must expect a Divinely 
established Church to teach a faith Divinely 
revealed, we must be prepared for the an- 
nouncement of mysteries, or articles of belief 
surpassing the limits of human understanding. 
If the faith of the Church were in every respect 
evident, it would be a strong presumption 
against her claims as a Church Divinely insti- 
tuted ; indeed, in that case, a supernatural 



310 INFIDELITY ; OR, THE LAST 

Revelation would be altogether unnecessary. 
Mysteries in a Divinely revealed Religion, are 
in perfect harmony with its distinctive char- 
acter and essential constitution. Mysteries 
give additional strength to the arguments which 
demonstrate the truth of the Catholic Church, 
for if those arguments were not absolutely 
convincing, men of intelligence could never 
have been induced to believe in revealed mys- 
teries. Before such men as Justin, Augustine, 
and others of like talent and genius, would 
believe the mysteries of the Incarnation and 
Transubstantiation, the infallible authority of 
the Catholic Church must have been demon- 
strated to them so as to leave no room for 
doubt. 

When once the Divine institution and the 
infallibility of the Church have been demon- 
strated, it is no longer reasonable to object to 
any article of faith on the ground of its incom- 
prehensibility. Even in the natural order, 
when the proof is evident, the mere objection of 
incomprehensibility is not a sufficient ground 
for doubt. We meet with incomprehensible 
objects at every step in the sphere of purely 
natural truths and experimental facts. I make 
bold to assert that some of the mysteries of 
reason and experience are far more incompre- 



CONSEQUENCE OP PROTESTANTISM. 3ll 

hensible than the profoundest mysteries of 
Catholic faith. I will give one or two proofs of 
it, both in the order of reason and in that of 
experience. Take the mysteries of the Trinity 
and Transubstantiation, and compare each of 
them with a mystery in the intellectual or 
experimental order. 

You say, Who can believe that in one God 
there are three persons? Observing that by 
the three persons we do not understand three 
individuals, but three distinct relations sub- 
sisting in one nature, I ask you in my turn, Is 
this mystery more incomprehensible than the 
eternity of God ? Reason can prove that 
there is a God, and that He exists without any 
beginning; but I ask you, Doyo'ufindit easier 
to conceive the mystery of existence without 
beginning, than the mystery of three persons 
in one God, as taught by the Catholic Church ? 
The former is as obscure as the latter ; or 
rather, if you look into treatises of Catholic 
theology, I am confident you will find it easier 
to form some idea of the Trinity than of God's 
eternal existence and His relation to time. 

Reason, when placed between the alternative 
of incomprehensibility and self-contradiction, 
prefers the former to the latter, and rather 
chooses to believe what it cannot comprehend, 



312 infidelity; or, the last 

than to deny it when the denial involves an 
absurdity. This is applicable to the mysteries 
of our Religion. We accept the incompre- 
hensible, rather than deny the irresistible 
proofs of the infallibility of the Church, and by 
denying them contradict our reason. There 
are incomprehensibilities in our faith, but no 
contradictions. When the infallibility of the 
Church is proved, nothing more is needed. 
God is the author both of reason and Revela- 
tion ; there are obscurities and mysteries in 
both. 

This is further confirmed by the considera- 
tion of the other mystery, to which I have 
called your attention, viz., Transubstantiation. 

In regard to Transubstantiation you ask, How 
is it possible that bread and wine can be 
changed into the Body and Blood of Christ ? 
I ask you in my turn. Is the mystery of Tran- 
substantiation, effected as it is by the immedi- 
ate influence of God's infinite power, more in- 
explicable than the changes of substance, the 
transmutations, that you meet with in nature 
at every step ? Can you explain the process of 
germination, growth, fructification ? Can you 
tell how the same juices of the earth are 
changed into a boundless variety of plants and 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 313 

trees, and the juices of plant and tree into 
another endless variety of fruits. What secret 
power is it that causes one tree to produce 
oranges, another figs ? How does the flower 
weave the same earthy substances into all the 
varieties of exuberant or delicate textures of 
vegetation ? You do not question the powers 
which God has imparted to inanimate nature, 
yet are not these changes of substance, where 
only a mediate influence of Divine power takes 
place, a thousand times more incomprehensible 
than that Transubstantiation which is effected 
by a direct and immediate act of God's omni- 
potence ? Is it not infinitely more incompre- 
hensible that God should have been able to 
bestow on senseless objects so great a diversity 
of powers, than that by His own immediate 
act He should be able to efl^ect the mystery of 
Eucharistic Transubstantiation ? 

Animal life is as full of mystery as the vege- 
table kingdom, and leads to the same conclu- 
sion. You wonder how bread and wine can 
be changed by the immediate act of Divine 
omnipotence, and you do not reflect that in 
your own body a more astonishing change of 
substance daily takes place. You eat bread 
and drink wine ; the bread and wine are 

changed into the substance of your flesh and 

28 



314 infidelity; or, the last 

blood. Eucharistic Transubstantiation is less 
astonishing than this change of substance 
effected by the powers of nature under the 
mediate influence only of Divine power. 

The process of vegetation and animal life 
may be regarded as a faint reflex in the 
natural order of an infinitely higher type of 
Transubstantiation in the Holy Eucharist; 
only the natural changes of substance, being 
more complicated, are less intelligible than the 
simple change produced by direct Divine inter- 
vention in the Eucharist. There is a real con- 
nection between natural and supernatural 
truth, and between all truths, because God, in 
w^hom all truth has its origin, is essentially one. 
Revelation being the work of God as well as 
the visible world, is very intimately connected 
with nature. I have always observed this 
mutual relation with the greatest satisfaction. 

The intimate connection of reason and 
revealed Religion, is evident, also, when we 
compare the principles of philosophy with 
those of theology, as every professor of theology 
has occasion to observe, especially when after 
having taught theology, he returns, as I did, to 
the teaching of philosophy. 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 315 



EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT. 

There is an article of faith which Infidels 
generally reject with the utmost scorn, and 
which by itself alone appears to them to be a 
sufficient reason to reject the whole of Chris- 
tianity. That article is the Eternity of the 
Pains of Hell. Let us briefly examine what 
right they have to deny it. 

The principal reason usually alleged against 
it, is the Infinite Mercy of God. Infidels pre- 
tend that Divine Mercy is in direct contradic- 
tion to Everlasting Punishment. But I ask, 
Why do not Infidels remember God's Infinite 
Justice, rather than His Infinite Mercy, when 
there is question of Divine punishment ? Why 
do they not infer from the nature of Infinite 
Justice, that the punishment of grievous sin 
must be eternal, since the offense involves a 
real contempt of Infinite Majesty ? Certainly, 
God is infinitely good, but He is, likewise, in- 
finitely just. Because He is infinitely good, 
He rewards virtue with eternal beatitude. No 
one thinks of complaining of this, though an 
eternal reward, such as the beatific, everlasting 
vision of God, infinitely surpasses all purely 



316 infidelity; or, the last 

human merits. Sovereign Justice requires that 
the punishment should bear an adequate pro- 
portion to the offense, and as man is incapable 
of undergoing torments which are infinite in 
intensity, it is but just that he should be sub- 
jected to punishments that are infinite in dura- 
tion. 

The eternity of Hell is a fearful truth, no 
doubt, and Infidels do their utmost to cast a 
doubt upon it, in order to stifle remorse, if 
possible, and to live on in sin with greater 
freedom. But their efforts are vain ; they can 
never disprove, nor even render doubtful, the 
existence of Eternal Punishments. To deny 
them, is to act in direct opposition to reason. 
I shall prove it. 

I grant that Eternal Punishments, are, in 
some respects, a mystery ; but, I need only 
remind you, mysteries meet us on every side, 
when we attempt to investigate the relations 
that exist between the Creator and His works. 
This fact will not be disputed. Every man 
knows too well that he cannot comprehend the 
relation of God's eternity to time, nor of His 
Immutability to His Creative Act. There are 
mysteries, there must be mysteries, in the 
mutual bearings which exist between the Divine 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 317 

attributes and the physical and moral order of 
things. The finite cannot comprehend the 
Infinite ; therefore it is wisdom to accept the 
clear teachings of Revelation on this as on all 
other subjects. 

You cannot reject ^ as a falsehood y that upon 
which you cannot pronounce a final judgment. 
To do so, at the risk of eternal misery, this, 
assuredly, is a mode of acting which you your- 
selves, upon reflection, will pronounce in the 
highest degree unworthy of a reasonable being. 

The audacity of Infidels in denying the 
Eternity of Hell, appears in a still more striking 
light, if we direct our attention to the numbers 
and authority of those who are arrayed against 
them. As compared with Infidels, believers in 
Everlasting Punishments, possess an immense 
preponderance of learning, talents, genius, as 
well as an incalculable majority of numbers. 
Infidels have against them the united testimon}'' 
of all Christian nations. Catholic and non-Ca- 
tholic, that have existed for eighteen hundred 
years. You know as well as we do, what a 
vast weight of genius, science, virtue is found 
in this immense multitude. Indeed, Infidels 
put themselves in opposition to the whole of 
mankind, for the Eternity of Hell has been the 



318 INFIDELITY ; OR, THE LIST 

uniform belief of men in all ages. The civil- 
ized, the barbarian, and the savage, Jews, 
Mahommedans, pagans, all tribes and tongues, 
of which there exists any record, have agreed in 
that belief, dreadful and mysterious as it is. 
Take, among ancient nations, the highly culti- 
vated Greeks and Romans : all who are ac- 
quainted with their literature, know that their 
philosophers, orators, and poets, speak of Ever- 
lasting Punishments in another life as of a 
doctrine universally prevalent. Thus Virgil 
sings, 

" Sedet, ceternumque sedebit 
Infelix Theseus."* 

" Chained, /orever chained, there pines 
Unhappy Theseus." 

A large number of similar passages might be 
cited from Virgil, Ovid, Statius, and other 
ancient Latin poets. A great portion of the 
sixth book of the iEneid, and the eleventh of 
Homer's Odyssey, is a description of the tor- 
ments of the wicked in Hades or Tartarus. 
The idea of the Furies, the Titans, of the wheel 
of Ixion, the stone of Sisyphus, the pool of 
Tantalus, is but the poetic embodiment of a 

* ^n. 1. VI. V. 617, 618. 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 319 

universal conviction. Even Lucretius, a dis- 
ciple of Epicurus, joins his testimony to that of 
all his cotemporaries : 

" Ignis ubi ardebit nullo delebilis aevo."* 

" Where fires shall glow, that Time shall never quench," 

Plato, in his Gorgias, speaks of two kinds of 
punishments, one of which is inflicted for 
offenses that can be expiated, and the other for 
crimes that admit of no expiation : those who 
are guilty of this latter class of crimes, will, he 
says, be punished by " frightful torments for- 
ever."! I might offer endless quotations from 
writers of all ages and nations, with whose 
literature we are acquainted, or from the works 
of travelers in all regions of the globe. This 
universal belief must have a common origin, 
and no other origin can be assigned for it than 
reason itself enlightened by the universal tra- 
dition of a primitive Revelation. 

Were the universal testimony of mankind in 
their favor, Infidels would be the first to appeal 
to it, but as it is against them, the}^ are in the 
habit of passing it by in silence, and appealing 
exclusively to reason. 

* Lucret. De Nat. Rerum. 
t Plato, Dial. Gorgias. 



320 INFIDELITY : OR, THE LAST 

But reason bears out the belief of mankind, 
and shows it to have its foundation in the very 
nature of sin and the Divine attributes. 
Though reason cannot fathom what is mys- 
terious in Eternal Punishments, yet it can 
demonstrate that they are perfectly in accord- 
ance w4th the intimate nature of sin and the 
perfections of God. 

In the first place, the malice of mortal sin, 
as I have observed, is in its nature infinite in 
duration. Again, man is created for God 
alone. If he serves Him on earth, his bliss in 
the next world will be perfect : it is but just, if 
he deliberately refuses to serve Him, and con- 
temns His law, that his misery in the next life 
should be complete. Man's happiness, to be 
perfect, must be eternal : his misery, to be 
complete, must be everlasting. 

St. Gregory the Great assigns a second rea- 
son. "It is right," he says, " that they should 
never be freed from punishment, whose souls 
in this life were never free from sin, and that 
the punishment of a reprobate should never 
have an end, because while living he placed no 
bounds to his malice."* The Eye of God reads 
the secrets of all hearts : He would cease to be 

I Greg. Magn. L 34. Mor. c. 19. 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 321 

God, were He incapable of inflicting a punish- 
ment proportioned to human depravity. 

A third reason intimately connected with the 
preceding, is the necessity of an adequate 
sanction of the Divine law; that is, the law of 
God must be so enforced that, under all cir- 
cumstances, there shall exist a motive power- 
ful enough to deter men from transgressing it. 
This is due to the supreme and sacred charac- 
ter of the Divine law ; but this demands that 
the punishment should be everlasting. Even 
in spite of Eternal Torments, men commit sin : 
what would happen, were they sure that Hell 
is not Eternal, and that all at last will be 
happy ? The penalty would be clearly insuffi- 
cient to enforce the law, and, for an immortal 
being, it would become contemptible. Human 
laws themselves, when properly enforced, have 
an adequate punishment attached to their trans- 
gression. You ask. Why does not God anni- 
hilate the sinner ? Annihilation is an act of 
Divine omnipotence, rather than of justice. 
No one will call suicide an act of justice, yet it 
is an attempt at self-annihilation. Annihila- 
tion, so far from being an adequate sanction of 
the law of God, would serve to encourage vice, 
29 



322 infidelity; or, the last 

not to restrain it. If he is to be annihilated, 
the sinner might say with a triumphant con- 
tempt of God's Sovereign Justice, I will sin as 
much as I like ; I care not for annihilation. 

Everlasting Punishments, however fearful, 
are nothing more than an adequate sanction of 
the law of God, or a vindication of the immut- 
able sanctity of the moral order. To vindicate 
eternal order, is clearly an object of infinitely 
higher moment, than the endless misery result- 
ing from wilful transgression. If, as you would 
fain believe, God cannot enforce His law by 
the infliction of Everlasting Punishment, im- 
mortal beings might insult him fearlessly : an 
immortal being might disregard any punish- 
ment that will at last terminate ; and God 
would be no better than a feeble parent, who 
cannot or dares not curb and chastise the in- 
solence of his offspring. But under the inflic- 
tion of Eternal Torments even Satan trembles. 

A fourth reason is founded on the verj" idea 
of human liberty and the probationary state of 
man on earth. It is in the highest degree 
worthy of Divine Wisdom, to have appointed 
for His creatures a period of probation, during 
which they may freely make their choice be- 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 323 

tween good ndevil. That period of probation, 
as Revelation teaches, is limited to this life. 
It is in the very nature of a probationary state, 
that the final choice made during it, should be 
irrevocable. He who enters eternity guilty of 
mortal sin, places himself, of his own accord, 
in a condition in which the guilt of mortal 
sin can no longer be expiated, because the 
period of probation and of grace is passed. 
The final choice, therefore, is in its own nature 
perpetual. In eternity, good and evil, light and 
darkness, are separated for evermore. 

In this unalterable order of Providence, rea- 
son can discover no absurdity, but is forced to 
ow^n its entire consistency with perfect Wisdom 
and Justice. Indeed, the most depraved 
scoffers at Religion, are so deeply convinced of 
the fitness of Eternal Punishments, that they 
cannot help secretly fearing their reality. 
Hence frequently their anger when Hell is 
spoken of in the pulpit. Were they convinced 
that an Everlasting Hell is a fable, they would 
laugh at our threats. The utmost an Infidel 
can say, is, that he doubts. If so, it is the part 
of a wise man to investigate ; and if he dis- 
covers that Everlasting Punishments are a 



324 INFIDELITY ; OR, THE LAST 

reality, reason commands him so to live as 
never to merit them. But to be in doubt, and 
yet to live as if the doubt were without founda- 
tion, or too unimportant to deserve attention, 
this is evidently to set reason at defiance. 
He who thus with unbounded recklessness 
exposes himself to eternal perdition, would 
deserve, indeed, that, if there was no Hell, God 
should create one for him especially, to punish 
so enormous an abuse of reason, so daring a 
defiance of God's Infinite Justice. 

This reminds me of the well-known dialogue 
between a Christian and an Atheist. " What 
a fool you are," said the Atheist, " to be so 
anxious to avoidsin, if there is no hell." "And 
what a fool you are," replied the Christian, 
" for if there is a hell, you are sure to go there." 

On this, as on so many other points, there is 
a glaring contradiction between the theory and 
the practice of Infidels. They admit that it is 
necessary to condemn certain criminals to 
perpetual imprisonment or even to death : but 
what is imprisonment for life, in the sphere of 
human justice, but a sort of Everlasting Pun- 
ishment? Human laws, in your opinion, 
require it. Far weightier reasons, as I have 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 325 

just shown, require the infliction of Eternal 
Punishments for the vindication of the Divine 
Law. 

The preceding remarks give me the right, I 
think, to draw the following conclusions : first, 
so far as Eternal Punishments are a mys- 
tery, reason has no right to pronounce a final 
judgment upon them ; secondly, though we 
cannot fully comprehend the Eternity of Hell, 
nor pronounce a final judgment upon it, yet we 
can prove, by the mere light of reason, that it 
is in harmony with the Infinite Justice and 
Wisdom of God ; thirdly, as there is question 
here, besides, of a point of revealed doctrine, 
man must submit his judgment to the evident 
authority of Divine Revelation. 

A time shall come when Christ Himself shall 
fulfil that solemn and most definite prediction, 
by which He wished to impress upon the minds 
of men the absolute necessity of submitting to 
His teachings. That day shall come when 
Christ shall say to the just, " Come, ye blessed 
of my Father," and to the wicked, " Depart, 
from me, ye cursed ;" " and these shall go into 
everlasting punishment ; but the just into life 
everlasting."* 

Matt. XXV. 34, 41, 46. 



326 infidelity; or, the last 

As I have on all occasions spoken plainly, 
throughout these pages, you must pardon me 
if I tell you, in conclusion, that the true reason 
why Infidels object to the doctrine of Eternal 
Punishments, is not that such punishments are 
absurd and impossible, but that, if the Eternity 
of Hell is a reality, they have but too much 
reason to dread it. 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 32" 



PRETENDED CONTRADICTION OF REVELATION 
WITH GEOLOGY AND HISTORY. 



After having thus answered the objections 
drawn from the mysteries, I will now briefly 
answer the objections drawn from geology and 
history. 

Infidels object that the Catholic Church, 
founding her ideas on the Bible, teaches that 
the world is only about six thousand j'ears old, 
whereas it is proved by undeniable geological 
observations that our globe has existed for 
many millions of years. Similar objections 
are made on historical grounds, and it is con- 
tended that human history can be traced back 
through a series of ages far exceeding the 
Christian computation. 

In regard to the geological objection, I 
answer, in the first place, that the Church has 
never defined the duration of the period of 
time which elapsed between the creation of the 
first elements of the world, and their co-ordin- 
ation on earth and in the heavens ; in other 
words, between the epoch indicated by the 
first verse of Genesis, " In the beginning God 



328 INFIDELITY ; OR, THE LAST 



created heaven and earth," and the other 
epoch when God said, " Let there be light." 

Secondly, the Church has never defined that 
the days of the Mosaic cosmogony were days 
of twenty-four hours. This observation is a 
complete answer to every geological objection 
that can be brought against Divine Revelation. 

Lastly, even taking the days of the Creation 
to be days of twenty-four hours, the geological 
objection has no force, for there is a most im- 
portant distinction to be made, which usually 
is entirely overlooked, between the period of 
creation and the time subsequent to it. There 
is an immense difference between the activity 
of natural powers under the immediate influ- 
ence of the creative act of God, at the moment 
of their creation, and their subsequent activity 
when they are permitted to act in accordance 
with the permanent laws of nature which God 
has given them. Many of you know that the 
progress of science often enables us to do in a 
few moments, what used to be, under other 
circumstances, the work of considerable time. 
The powers of nature during the creative epoch 
may have been able to effect in a short time 
what now requires thousands of j^ears to be 
accomplished. God may have given to the 
world the appearance which it presents, in 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 329 

order to try our faith, our submission to 
revealed Religion. 

The objections drawn from history have no 
force whatever. No doubt there have existed 
nations whose vanity has prompted them to 
claim an imaginary duration embracing count- 
less centuries ; but have they ever proved their 
claims by any historical document? They 
give us fables, and a confused mass of asser- 
tions ; they have not even forged a history ; 
the)^ do not relate a single fact. No history of 
any nation reaches back to the time of Noe. 
It is, indeed, hard to conceive how the fabulous 
pretensions of national vanity, ever came to be 
brought forward as an objection against bibli- 
cal history. Such tales may be good enough 
for the nursery ; they are -certainly unworthy 
of serious discussion. 

The same must be said of the class of objec- 
tions founded on the Sanscrit books and lan- 
guage, and on certain Egyptian monuments 
and hieroglyphic inscriptions. Some of those 
objections are in reality founded on nothing 
better than astrological conjectures ; others 
on various kinds of inventions equally arbitrary ; 
all of them are alike destitute of force and per- 
tinence. They may agree with the prejudices 
of Infidels, but they are of no value in a seri- 
ous and candid discussion. You cannot cite a 



330 infidelity; or, the last 

single one which is worthy the serious notice 
of an intelligent man. 

I return to the proposition that a logical 
mind must either admit the conclusivejiess of 
the seven arguments which I have adduced, 
and their irresistible consequences, or remain 
convicted of self-contradiction and absurdity. 

Yes, it is absurd, while you contemplate the 
universe, to say, There is no God. 

It is absurd, while you look upon yourself as 
a reasonable being, to deny the immortality of 
the soul. 

It is absurd, while you confess that there is a 
God, and that you are a reasonable and im- 
mortal being, to maintain that you have no 
essential relations to Him, that you have no 
truths to believe, no duties to fulfil, or, in other 
words, that there is no Religion. 

It is absurd, while you grant that your reason 
is insufficient to guide you to salvation, to deny 
the necessity of Revelation. 

It is absurd, while you proclaim Christ to 
have been the wisest and most virtuous of 
men, to maintain that He falsely pretended 
to be the Son of God. 

It is absurd to pretend that the Church 
founded by Him, and endow^ed with all the 
marks of a Divine origin, has erred, or can err. 



CONSEQUENCK OF PR0T1<:STANTISM. 331 

It is absurd, while you acknowledge that this 
Church was committed to the guidance of St. 
Peter and his successors, to deny that the 
Catholic Church, which is the only Church 
governed by the successors of St. Peter, is the 
true Church of Christ, and that out of her pale 
there is no salvation. 

I know that if a man is determined to im- 
pugn the truth at all hazards, it is always in 
his power to urge sophistical objections, and by 
unreasonable cavils to hide its light from his 
own mind. If in the face of heaven and earth, 
in spite of the myriads of contingent beings of 
which the universe is composed, there are men 
who have the audacity to deny the existence 
of the Creator, and pretend to consider the 
world as the work of chance, it is no wonder 
that men are to be met with who, in the face of 
all arguments, will continue to deny the claims 
of the Catholic Church, and the divinity of 
Christ. But as St. Paul declares atheists 
inexcusable, because the existence of God is 
evident from the existence of the universe ; so 
whoever refuses to recognize the Catholic 
Church as the Church of God, is inexcusably 
guilty, because the evidences of her claims are 



o82 INFIDELITY : OR, THE LAST 



SO obvious and overwhelming, that no one wh(> 
examines them fairly can fail to be convinced. 
I may compare the seven conclusive argu- 
ments which I have urged, to the seven 
thunders spoken of in the Apocalypse. Rolling 
on through the course of all centuries, they 
announce to Infidels and unbelievers the ap- 
proach of the last awful judgment, when it shall 
be made clear before the world, that whoever 
has erred and perished, has erred and perished 
freely; when, as is affirmed in Holy Writ, the 
wicked will exclaim, "repenting and groaning 
for anguish of spirit," " We fools. . . . There- 
fore we have erred from the way of truth ; and 
the light of justice hath not shined unto us ; and 
the sun of understanding hath not risen upon 
us. . . . What hath pride profited us ; or what 
advantages hath the boastingof riches brought 
us ? All those things are passed away like a 
shadow." Notice these lamentations. Is it not 
pride that makes Infidels and unbelievers 
despise Catholics for their submission to the 
Church in matters of faith, or, as is often also 
the case, especially in this country, for their 
poverty ? All this will be changed on the last 
day: " We fools esteemed their life madness, 
and their end without honor. Behold now they 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 333 

are numbered among the children of God, and 
their lot is among the saints." 

The utter impossibility of finding an excuse 
for their conduct, will crown the despair of un- 
believers and infidels. Either they were con- 
vinced, and rejected the truth deliberately ; or 
they willfully refused to clear up their doubts, 
and discover the truth. Your error is wilful — • 
this, like a flash of lightning that shatters while 
it illuminates, accompanies each of the seven 
arguments which I have placed before you. 
" Destruction is thy own," is the terrific inscrip- 
tion written on the portals of the eternal abyss, 
and the wail of self-reproach that forever 
re-echoes through all its fearful depths. 



Here, dear friends and fellow-citizens, I con- 
clude this appeal. You have no choice except 
The Catholic Church — or Despair. 

Every one who has read these pages with- 
out prejudice, must have understood clearly, 
that Protestantism, in its tendency, leads to 
Distress and Despair; that in its principle it 
involves absurdity; that in its prejudices it is/^ 



334 infidelity; or, the last 

founded on calumny ; that in its last conse- 
quences it implies self-contradiction, and that, 
in every point of view, it is a Religion at war 
with the human heart and intellect, and with 
human society. 

The history of Protestantism confirms all I 
have advanced. Protestantism began by in- 
troducing division and discord among brethren ; 
it has continued its work of division in its own 
bosom : religious animosity and hostile doc- 
trines divide its sects ; its work of division is 
forever progressing. 

Luther, Calvin, and their adherents would 
have done well to amend their own lives ; the 
faults which they had observed in individuals 
could not justify them in the rash and violent 
introduction of discord and hatred among mil- 
lions of brethren. 

The condition of the whole world would be 
far better than it is, if all Christian nations were 
still united in the same faith. No one can 
calculate the amount of misery and bloodshed 
that would have been avoided, if England, 
Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, and 
Russia had remained Catholic. If all these 
powers, instead of being actuated by religious 
jealousies, had united their efforts to convert 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 335 

idolatrous nations, particularly in Asia, there 
is but little doubt that, with the Divine assist- 
ance, they would have succeeded in that glori- 
ous undertaking. 

A time will come when all our separated 
brethren will return to Catholic unity. " They 
shall be made one fold and one shepherd." 
Happy the time when the Christian world shall 
witness their return. The Te Deum which will 
then be intoned by the Sovereign Pontiff as 
Head of the Church, will be the most glorious 
and consoling ever intoned by the Vicar of 
Christ. 

There is no country where a return to 
Catholic unity would bear richer fruits 
than in the United States ; none where, 
even in a political and social point of view, it 
would be more desirable. E pluribus unum, is 
your national motto : nothing would contribute 
more effectually to keep the States united, than 
unity of faith. Sectarianism fosters animosity. 
Mutual charity and universal happiness would 
be greatly promoted, if, instead of the denomi- 
nations which now divide the numerous fami- 
lies of all nations that have fixed their abode 
in this noble land, the spiritual authority of 
the onl}^ true Church of Christ were to unite 
them all in one communion of faith and hope. 



336 infidelity; or, the last 



May God in His infinite goodness hasten the 
time when this happy union of faith shall be 
accomplished in this glorious Republic. Let 
each one contribute his best efforts to bring 
about that auspicious event. This little work 
has been written for that purpose. I know 
that my arguments will not have the effect of 
making all my readers members of the Catho- 
lic Church and heirs of heaven ; but I entertain 
the firm hope, and cherish the sweet consola- 
tion, that all who are sincere and resolute will 
be moved, by the perusal of this work, to 
inquire earnestly into the truth of the Catholic 
Religion, and I am sure that all who do so will, 
with the grace of God, become Catholics. 

Nothing in the world could have induced me 
to leave my native country, but the desire 
which has prompted me to write these pages. 
My most earnest wish is to contribute, as far 
as I am able, to bring you to the knowledge of 
the truth, and place you in the path of salva- 
tion. Now that I have addressed 3^ou all, I 
shall leave this life with the sweet hope that I 
have fulfilled m}^ fluty towards you as my 
brethren in Jesus Christ, as my friends, and 
fellow-citizens. 

If now and then I have made use of any 
harsh expressions, I hope you will forgive me, 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 337 

for the reason which I have alleged in the 
Preface. When speaking or writing on a sub- 
ject of such vast importance as Religion, 
charity commands us to utter the truth frankly 
and fairly in the plainest language. 

Once more I declare, in the presence of God, 
who searches the inmost recesses of the heart, 
that I have not the least bitterness of feeling 
against any religious denomination, but cherish 
in the depths of my soul the deepest affection 
for all. I am firmly persuaded that in all 
denominations of Christians, whether they are 
called Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, 
Baptists, or by. whatever name they may be 
distinguished, there are noble-hearted men, 
who err not from malice, but because they have 
been born and brought up in Protestantism, 
and have never earnestly examined the reli- 
gious questions discussed in these pages. 
Those sincere and candid men will read my 
arguments with the same pure intention, the 
same calm and earnestness, with which I have 
written them, and will, with the aid of Divine 
grace, derive from them the fruit of conversion 
which they are intended to produce. 

I say with the aid of Divine grace^ because 
faith, after all, is a gift of God. No arguments, 
however powerful, no evidence, however con- 



SS8 INFIDELITY J OR, THE LAST 

vincing, can impart Divine faith. Humility 
and prayer are necessary. It is necessary to 
say with the centurion of the Gospel, " I do 
believe, Lord ; help Thou my unbelief." Give 
me strength to proceed in my inquiries, to 
accomplish what Thy grace has shown me to 
be necessary for my salvation, and to be a 
member of Thy Church. 

I know, said Du Perron, that I can convince 
any man of error, and prove to him the 
undeniable truth of the Catholic Church ; but I 
cannot convert heretics : for that purpose I 
send them to the Bishop of Geneva. He 
referred to St. Francis de Sales, at that time 
Bishop of Geneva, who had the gift of soften- 
ing the hearts of men. It is not enough to 
convince the mind, the heart must be con- 
verted. 

St. Paul could convince Agrippa, and terrify 
Felix ; but even St. Paul could not convert 
men who refused to be converted. When the 
will obstinately resists the grace of conversion, 
the most that can be obtained is a confession 
like that of Agrippa, " Thou almost persuadest 
me to ^e a Christian ;" or like that of the 
Areopagites, " We will hear thee again con- 
cerning this matter.'* 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 339 

There are but too many who thus resist the 
grace of God. For such men all argument is 
in vain. Unless you humble yourselves before 
God, and have recourse to prayer, you will not 
be converted. You will say at best, Your 
arguments have almost made me a Catholic. 
I will again consider the subject at some future 
time. 

Who has promised you that the time which 
you hope for, will be granted ? " To-da}^, if 
you shall hear His voice, harden not your 
hearts." To-day, while you are reading these 
pages, you hear the voice of God ; pray to God 
that you may clearly understand the truth, and 
resolve to embrace it. 

Never will you find peace or hope, unless 
you obey your convictions. On the other 
hand, you will be sure to enjoy peace, if 
following the inspirations of grace and the 
dictates of your conscience, you ask with the 
sincerity of St. Paul, " Lord, what wilt Thou 
have me to do ?" and if, without delay, with a 
mind fully made up, you follow the known will 
of God. 

Many an Elymas will do his best to prevent 
you from becoming Catholics. You will have 
to encounter the reproaches of those whose 
interest it is to uphold Protestantism ; you will 



340 infidelity; or, the last 

have to meet and conquer the still more 
formidable influence of popular opinion. But 
why should we seek to please men rather than 
God ? Why should a man be ashamed to 
avow his convictions, especially in this free 
country ? Why should he lack the courage to 
do that on which all the consolations of his 
life and all his hopes for eternity depend ? 
But one thing is necessary, and that is to 
render yourself pleasing to God by leading a 
life worthy of the Catholic faith. I have 
endeavored to contribute towards this object, by 
a work entitled " A Manual of the Catholic 
Religion for Self-Instruction." 

On all subjects, except the Catholic Church, 
your national character is eminently distin- 
guished by a spirit of inquiry. Look into our 
doctrines seriously, earnestly, impartially, as 
was recently done by one of your eminent 
men. Judge Burnett, formerly Governor of 
Oregon. Read his work, " The Path which led 
a Protestant Lawyer to the Catholic Church." 
Conducting his investigation upon principles 
similar to those which govern legal proceed- 
ings, he compared the Protestant with the 
Catholic doctrine, consulted eminent waiters on 
both sides, and became a Catholic. Adopt 
this or any other method which you may pre- 



CONSEQUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 341 

fer, but by all means, if you love the truth, and 
wish to be saved, examine the Catholic reli- 
gion, and examine it with earnestness and 
impartiality and you shall return to the bosom 
of the Mother Church, from which violence and 
calumny separated your ancestors, and from 
w^hich the prejudices of birth and education 
have kept you alienated. 

If any one of you, after having become a 
Catholic, should be asked the reason v^^hy he 
has taken such a step, let him answer with 
La Harpe, '*Mes amis, j'ai examine, et je 
crois ; examinez, et vous croirez. — My friends, 
I have examined, and I believe ; examine, and 
you will believe." 

Earnest examination united with fervent 
prayer will surely lead you to the Catholic 
Church, the Mother of knowledge, of holy hope 
and holy love, the ever-flowing source of con- 
solation in time, and the only guide to a 
blissful eternity, through Jesus Christ our Lord, 
her Founder. Amen. 



THE EKD. 




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